Sales, Social and Tech

Most shops enter into deals with Groupon to reach out to more customers. A cake shop in UK found out that the Groupon swarm effect could also adversely affect their business. Write David Wilkes for The Mail Online , She offered subscribers to the site a 75 per cent discount on 12 cakes – selling them for £6.50 instead of the usual £26. Mrs Brown, from Woodley, near Reading, said: ‘We only expected to get a few hundred orders out of it but we had thousands and thousands pouring in. We had to cut it off at 8,500 orders.’ Her company, called Need a Cake, normally employs eight workers, but it had to bring in 25 agency staff. After spending an extra £12,500 on staff and distribution, she made a loss of £2.50 per order. This is an important warning to all, especially to those that have to deliver real physical goods, that it is important to ensure you set a limit to the coupons offered to ensure that your business don't suffer from the promotion.

If you go by the recent deals results on Groupon Singapore, those who will potentially benefit most isn’t going to the restaurateur or the retail outlet or even that beauty spa.  The top deal on Groupon Singapore was from aircon servicing company, Refreshing Cool, that offered SGD12 to service each wall mounted air conditioning unit. This was 60% off the original price of SGD30 per air conditioning unit. The offer was so popular that Groupon that 1087 Groupon users bought it. In comparison, the 2nd most popular deal only sold 296 groupons. A Japanese restaurant only sold 69 groupons. It seems Singaporeans are after discounts which offer manpower services around the house as compared to F&B discounts or Spa discounts. The discount would have cost Refreshing Cool about SGD26,088 (SGD19,566 absorbed for the discount and SGD6522 estimated commission to Groupon Singapore), Refreshing Cool probably got more customers referrals than putting an ad in The Straits Times classi...