http://www.cogzidel.com/groupon-clone

1. Increase of advertisement apart from E-mail for more consumer benefits.

2. More added geolocations apart from the U.S to cover more markets.

Already, Groupon has introduced the daily deals in iPhone and Android. Similarly, more technological features and advancement for better purchase of quality products at cheap rate.

With these things are in place, the business model would definitely work for merchants and consumers in the future.

1. Increase of advertisement apart from E-mail for more consumer benefits.

2. More added geolocations apart from the U.S to cover more markets.

Already, Groupon has introduced the daily deals in iPhone and Android. Similarly, more technological features and advancement for better purchase of quality products at cheap rate.

With these things are in place, the business model would definitely work for merchants and consumers in the future.

If you are interested to see what one of your long-time readers is doing to attack the targeting/personalization issue – not just for groupon but for e-commerce in general, check out http://www.koaladeal.com.

Cheers!

My wife and I subscribe to a number of these sites (Groupon, Living Social, Restaurants.com . . .). The targeting isn’t great (no, I don’t want a mani/pedi for the third straight day) but it has some really interesting activities I never would have guessed were in Cleveland.

From the businesses’ perspective, we’re better customers for the activities than the restaurants. My wife got beginner flying lessons and yoga classes. I got personal training, cooking lessons and nearly bought scuba lessons (and may still go and pay full freight anyway). We were only aware of the cooking lessons before, and would have gone back without the discount (though not as often as we do now).

As for restaurants – I never buy on Groupon but I do on Restaurants.com. And frankly, since I’m not going to the same restaurant more than once a month for dinner, I can’t see why I wouldn’t buy a coupon before going.

Now, if restaurant.com is really a form of price discrimination (we’re still profitable customers, but less so than people who don’t know) then it works – we’ll go back with some frequency. But I can only think of two or three times we’ve gone back to one and paid full freight.

It’s sort of insane that a company with a business model indistinguishable from spam is about to have what looks to be a monster ipo…

Given all the improv guys they supposedly have hired I suspect there will be some great reinactments of Glengarry Glen Ross going on in their offices in the next few years…

I get an endless stream of worthless offers from Groupon. Eventually, like most people, I will simply unsubscribe.

I do think Groupon works well as a deathwatch monitor for restaurants. If I see a restaurant on Groupon, I assume they are in trouble.

Scalable? They have sales people negotiate every deal with merchants? that’s not scalable. If they are losing money hand over fist because they are trying to grow a business that requires more and more people to generate sales, it’s not scalable. It’s a pyramid scheme.

Mark is right about the lottery ticket aspect of Groupon’s IPO. The stock will most likely rise on opening day, and some people will make money. Most will lose, and until then, groupon will generate lots of page views for posts and articles about the next big thing and those amazing new dotcoms. Probably a lot more entertaining than reading about financial crisises, but if you’re looking for entertainment in the tech world (not that the latest scam/fad should be considered tech just because it runs on the web), nothing beats an Apple product introduction, where you can almost see their competition crapping in their pants and losing sleep worrying about how to respond.