Is Groupon changing what people are willing to pay?

I have used groupon for restaurants that I currently frequent, along with places I have never been to. Also, I will be travelling this spring and have signed up for the Groupon's for that city and will hopefully get some good opportunities!

I definitely will re-visit local places if I find them appealing to me, whether or not I have a Groupon. For the places that I am travelling to however, it is unlikely I would be returning in the near future as I do not expect to be travelling back to the same area.

I would be interested in reading about Groupons from a business owners perspective. I have been considering a Groupon campaign and wondering what kind of sustainable impact it will have. I followed one Groupon offering for one of my favourite restaurants and was shocked to see the negative comments on yelp etc.after the Groupn campaign. This business was so overwhelmed after the Groupon offering that it's service/quality levels dropped sharply for a short time. More harm than good? I would love to hear comments.

I haven't yet commited to any of the Groupon deals, despite some of them being *very* desirable. At this point in time, the deals are simply luxury items to me. Massages, spa services, high-end hair salons, fancy (adult-oriented?) restaurants... while I'd love to go, I just can't justify it in my budget. I'll keep watching though! Something's bound to come down the pipe that is just too sweet to refuse.

I thought the original story link I clicked said: "Can you save money with Groupon?" to which I thought, "no" ... not if you're purchasing goods and services you typically wouldn't. I do believe that Groupon is changing how much I'm willing to spend... but having a family also did that. ;)

I have heard that Groupon keeps as much as half of the amount you pay to Groupon for the offer. So if you are going to a restaurant on a deal like $50 of Food for $25, Groupon is keeping HALF of that $25, and now the restaurant gets $12.50. Now at a glance this mean seem like an impossible proposition, remember that only a small percentage of people that buy coupons, actually use them before they expire.

So say this restaurant sells, 400 Groupons, of the $10,000 Groupon collects, the restaurant only gets $5000, BUT, if only say 20% of the people actually redeem them... its a pretty nice deal for both the restaurant and Groupon. ( 400 x .20 = 80 ) and $5000 / 80 = $62.50.

In the end... we are sheep to slaughter, and big eyes, easy money and good marketing, convince alot of us, that we REALLY do need Today's groupon, when stats show, there is a REALLY good chance we won't ever use it.

I am a business owner and I did groupon once and this will be the FL (FIRST & LAST). Yes, it's true that it brings more traffic BUT most of the ppl who bought it don't live in the area. So the chance of them coming back...very slim UNLESS they happen to come to my area for other purposes. There was a customer who bought 5 groupons, on her 5th visit she said: "I really like your food but it's too far from where I live. I'll come back IF I get a chance." Do I really count on that big "IF"? Nahhh....
Furthermore, most of ppl who bought the groupon were attracted by the big 50% off or more. The tricky part is, instead of being appreciative that they only paid half of the original price, once the deal is over they wouldn't wanna buy the same product cuz they feel like they have to pay DOUBLE of what they used to pay. It'll feel more like a rip off if the discount was 70% or even 90%.
The whole purpose of this idea is to get your name out there as much as you can cuz lotta ppl wouldn't have known my place it it was for groupon BUT if they came just because it was "cheap" and never going to come back for the original price, then can what was the point of the whole thing? Oh and did I mention they take 40% as their cut? Hahah sweet!!

To sum up, is groupon or any other groupon clones profitable for biz owners? In the small picture and if you are short sighted, MAYBE. But in the big picture and from my personal experience... DEFINITELY NOT RECOMMENDED!

I also did groupon for my salon services. There was this lady who bought it and said she doesn't want it anymore and asked for a refund. I politely said there is no refund policy as groupon takes half of the total. She then said "fine" and went straight to the door and waited for someone to come in and tried to sell it to my "paying" customer who was actually my regular. It so happened that she was gonna get the same service as the one on groupon. She had no reason to refuse it if she could save almost $30 on the spot. I couldn't believe they were making that deal right inside my shop. I had a feeling there were going to make a scene if say no plus I didn't want to ruin the relationship with my regular so I accepted it just out of goodness of my heart. After that B%%@ sold her groupon, she goes to my customer "It's you lucky day!" and left. Wow...she has audacity to do say that right in front of me?

Anyway, I don't wanna go through this BS again. Therefore bye bye to GP!!

I have been using a few deals from groupon. I feel really bad for the businesses. There are restaurants that I would usually pay a premium for, but now after using groupon for once, I feel they are just some cheap places. I understand this is not true, but the impression is there, and I really can't help with it. I would say groupon has made me buy deals for places I usually pay regular prices for and never went back again until I can find another groupon. As an honest advice to business owners, if you want to keep your class and style, don't sponsor groupon. Afterall, high end expensive things never go on sell. Just look up any of the luxury brands on Bloor...

I have recently bought a number of groupons, for different businesses. I bought one for a body product type store, spend $20 get $40 worth of product. I went B4 Christmas & got a great 50% off sale on the items I wanted, AND they let me still use the Groupon. What a deal !

Another Groupon I bought was for a hotel. It was in town, but in a great area on Robson. Wouldn't have gone otherwise, but really had a great time with a friend. The hotel included French Press coffee service in the morning, delivered to your room, up to 3 hrs free long distance, up to 100 free photocopies, free Wi-Fi in the room, $25 credit in the restaurant, etc. so we took advantage of all of these things. The only drawback was the parking cost $35, but we knew that ahead & still chose to take the car, so weren't supprised by it. We had a great weekend, ate well, relaxed in the jacuzzi and phoned all our long distance friends, etc. Money well spent.

I will continue to buy Groupons based on these experiences so far.

From a customer's perspective, I haven't had any problems with Groupon so far. I just moved to a new city and a lot of the attractions that I've been interested in, have come up on Groupon. It's been great to be able to save some money in the process! I do notice that there are a lot of Groupons that come up for services that are "luxuries" as someone else put it. Often times I'm not looking to buy that sort of thing. It's hard not to get tempted by those deals!

one point/question I have is this...how much would any of these businesses have paid for print or radio ads or some other form of paid advertisement and how does that compare to the 'cost' of Groupon? How do those other methods compare in terms of getting people out to their location for a massage, dinner, etc?

I agree that some of the Groupons I've purchased will be one-offs, but there are many others that got me out to try a restaurant I'd been curious about, or introduced me to a new product or service. As well, nobody tracks the people that missed out on the Groupon, but because of getting acquainted with the business have now tried it out or word of mouth from people that used a Groupon.

I think that in the end some businesses will 'profit' through the advertising piece and others will not.

just sayin...

I have purchased serveral groupons and with the exception of one location have been very happy with my experiences, but the last place, what a joke...i reviewed their menu on line b4 purchasing, the only problem is that the on line menu is no longer being offered, so our meal out that should have cost us $33 plus tacxs cost a total of $55, would not have ordered appetizers if we had known that the prices had increased so much, so will not return, have our regular hangouts that we will return to,,,,all the best to you tim....ps have told my friends about my experience, they will put the word out

GroupOn is a great way to save on deals for it offers big discounts to its consumers. At the same time, it helps a lot of local merchants drive more customers to their businesses. If you want to see GroupOn and other deal sites' daily deals all in one place to help you browse more conveniently on deals, check out www.GroupBuyUnited.com.

From a business perspective:
I have talked to group on numerous times trying to see if it is worth the deal to me.

They demand a 50% sale and then take 50% of whatever is leftover.
They also charge the client for any "fees" they may incur - ie. visa / debit transaction fees.
At the end of the day this means that the business is left with LESS than 25% of the original price.

Group On openly admits that working with them is NOT a money making venture for the business - it is only for the promotions. But as some of the other businesses have indicated above, most people that come in with this coupon do not come back, they are just deal hunters.

I completely agree with the fact that people paying 50% for something don't want to pay 100% as it become a rip off - especially if they are just coupon hopping.

One person indicated that if only 20% of people use the coupon it is a great deal for the business. That is a VERY BIG IF. Statistics show that 20% of people don't use it, therefore 80% do.

At the end of the day it really depends on the type of business you are.

We have looked into Groupon and saw our competition offer a 16 x 20 digital reproduction for $ 69.00 while we offer our clients the same service for $ 39.00 with our promotion so I would say Groupon is no deal. Check us out at www.urban-art.ca.

I have bought a quite a few deals for daily deal website, I have purchased from Living Social, WagJag, CaptainSave, FabFind and Groupon. I have been more than happy with all my purchases, I never had any problems redeeming my voucher and the restaurants I visited were not over crowded. I think the key is to wait a month before using the voucher so all the very eager redeems are already gone :)

I think the hardest past about all these deal sites is trying to keep up with them all. I would like to suggest www.DeliverTheDeals.com to anyone interested in daily deals, its really easy, just enter you postal code or address and the find daily deals near you :)

I e-mailed Living Social to see if it was right for my business and didn't even get the courtesy of a reply!

We did dine out on a Living Social deal in Calagry, Mango Shiva restaurant and was truly impressed. We spent well over the coupon amount and will go back so I think it really served it's purpose in this case.