| We (B2brev.com, a YC company) surveyed 2500 merchants that used Groupon, LivingSocial and 18 other daily deal sites. Our data shows that overall, 75%+ would use Groupon and LivingSocial again. This is a decent indications that there are a large number of success stories out there (to magsafe's point). To address 3 additional points with some data: * REPEAT CUSTOMERS: We asked a 5-scale question of "How many repeat customers did you get?" with answers being None / Few / Moderate / Many / Tons / Not sure. About 15% of respondent said that Groupon and LivingSocial provided "Many" or "Tons". Anecdotally, many mentioned that a repeat rate of over 10% was very good compared to their expectations. About 18% were "Not sure" * BARGAIN HUNTING CUSTOMERS: We read and categorized every single open-ended comment (160k words!), and 14% of respondents complained about Groupon/L.S. drawing the bargain hunters. In our opinion, this was lower than expected * ADVERTISING BENEFIT: Local businesses definitely see a benefit to the daily deals beyond the direct sales. Again, based on the open-ended responses, it was the #2 most mentioned benefit. Anecdotally, many mentioned that they spend money to generate awareness anyway and that it was a very acceptable marketing cost There is one caveat that many commenters here touched upon, which is that running a successful daily deal really depends on the type of business. For instance, of Restaurants and Shopping businesses, only about 50% would do the daily deal again--and there are wide ranges of satisfaction even within these category buckets. In a nutshell, there are millions of local businesses and a lot of nuanced marketing needs (i.e., lots of nice opportunities to be addressed). Link to our blog here to see some charts/tables:
http://blog.b2brev.com/daily-deals-the-merchant-perspective You can also buy our research report to get a the most comprehensive picture :). |