New Ways to find Offers!

One month ago, my best friend introduced me to my obsessions LivingSocial, Groupon, and in just one week I purchased an annual subscription of Cosmopolitan, $20 for $40 worth of food credit at Nikki Beach  and a food coupon for a local place I eat by my job called Pancheros. I actually had to limit myself to only buying 1 thing per week, because if I didn't I was certain to be in debt. I then have started to think of how incredible such a simple app can bring me into wasting over $30?All you have to do is follow  3 easy steps , making it that much more difficult to resist. They even make it extremely easy to purchase, whether on the computer or phone. Was I the only individual so hypnotized by these promotions?

My latest favorite of all these so called LivingSocial. LivingSocial is a very popular sight which just last spring alone brought in $39 million, and is expected to go into three digit figures by the end of this year.  These websites focus on selling to the public unexpected deals, coupons, packages at relatively low prices for a very limited time frame.

LivingSocial want to build a sense of surprise and keep people on there toes . They study the environment depending on the area, and then create deals which will best suit the targeted areas.
Groupon, which is in the same industry, sees LivingSocial as their greatest threat. In fact, LivingSocial actually had  a greater amount of traffic to their page than Groupon. Yet, we also have to understand that just because people visit the website, it doesn't necessarily mean each one of those visitors purchases a deal on the site. A lot look around, go to the page through other advertisements and even for several other reasons.
 In marketing, when consumers show preference for a product, it doesn't necessarily mean they are going to go to the step of purchasing , for example a new type of cookies. In the end, what the companies whether a company selling cookies, or a service on the LivingSocial site, and completing the purchase process.

Yet although I have shown preference for LivingSocial, I still use the other sites. What also was very beneficial for me is that  Bing is now incorporating both sites together, where the deals come out together, making it much easier to see the promotions. What that feature does on Bing (called Deals) is that it puts together many deals from these sites as well as several others. This will enable people to easily browse through the page and pick and choose from thousands of different offers. Not only are companies helping us find deals, but other search engines like Bing are making it extremely simple for us to look through and browse through the promotions that most interest us.

What exactly are people so enticed at about these deal sites? Is it the limited time luring in people, or the low numbers? Whatever it is, these million dollar companies seem to be doing their work well and will continue doing so with new promotions on a day to day basis!

Till we meet again!
Aileen


http://www.cosmopolitan.com/
http://www.pancheros.com/
http://www.nikkibeach.com/miami/menu.php
http://livingsocial.com/deals/how_it_works
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/08/25/businessinsider-livingsocial-groupons-biggest-competitor-now-gets-more-web-traffic-than-groupon-2010-8.DTL
http://livingsocial.com/about
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/118616/20110303/microsoft-bing-groupon-living-social-daily-deals.htm
http://www.bing.com/