Last week, I went to a hair salon and paid half of what I usually spend because of a deal that I bought in online two months earlier. When I bought the deal, I suggested it to two friends, who each bought it and I was rewarded with RM10. I used those money to buy another deal in online. And the cycle continues.
Welcome to the world of online group buying, where the power of the Web can be utilized to offer surprisingly large discounts to a sizable number of people for things they actually want to buy.Online group buying websites are popping out lately in Malaysia. It's a bit of deja-vu like many were attempting to build a local social network site some years back. They offer daily deals in your local area, sometimes up to 90% off the normal asking price and you might have wondered how the group buying work.
In another way to define online group buying is collective buying. The merchant is assured of a large group of customers, as well as the exposure of their brand and business, while the group of users receive sizable discounts on products or service they want.
The group buying concept has origins in the Chinese “tuangou” trend where a large group of people was executed to get discount prices from retailer when they were willing to buy the same item.The difference now is that the online group buying sites do the negotiations and gather the collective so that the individual only needs to take up the offer.
The leaders of group buying are, without doubt, Groupon. It is said to be the fastest growing company ever, with five million users in the UK alone and is available in 42 cities. Other than that, people can be notified of these deals by signing up for daily emails from the site or by checking social networks like Hotmail and Facebook. They may then purchase deals by logging onto the group-buying site and printing vouchers from the site.
No comments:
Post a Comment