When it comes to daily deals, I doubt consumers will chose Groupon over a better deal, just because of the Groupon name.
On this count, it's worth remembering that extreme bargain hunters have very low loyalty to vendors. It's what allows them to take advantage of the best deals. Which is why I think a lot of businesses have been disappointed in the results from Groupon deals, and why the moat around Groupon is pretty shallow, given how much they've spent.
Eh. How much Groupon disappointment do you think comes instead from brick & mortar small businesses being utterly unacquainted with the high-volume low-conversion sales model of the web? Because that seems like the thesis behind Groupon: give local biz a taste of how customer acquisition is tuned and scaled on the web.
I'm a loyal customer of several well-known, well-regarded small businesses in Chicago, and none of them have the marketing savvy of the least-successful successful web startup we can think of.
So in that regard, I think the people who worry about the disloyal deal hunters miss the point a bit. That's the flip side of the 5-10% conversion rate: the 90% who bounce. Web people don't flip out about this. Local biz does.
Remember, the most popular current alternative to Groupon is advertising. The only reason local biz people don't flip out over advertising effectiveness is that nobody knows how to figure it out.
On this count, it's worth remembering that extreme bargain hunters have very low loyalty to vendors. It's what allows them to take advantage of the best deals. Which is why I think a lot of businesses have been disappointed in the results from Groupon deals, and why the moat around Groupon is pretty shallow, given how much they've spent.