Magazines Archives - 2011 July

Groupon Singapore expands sales with new platforms, targeted deals
Story 9 - E-commerce

GROUPON SINGAPORE, which came into operation last December, is expanding the market for online group buying in the country with the introduction of more platforms and more daily targeted deals with a wide spectrum of retailers.

Groupon — which was launched in Chicago, USA, in November 2008 entered the Singapore market via Beeconomic, a fledgling deal-of-the-day website set up last May by two brothers: Karl and Christopher Chong.

As the first group-buying website in the country, Groupon Singapore is reaching out to different strata of Singapore society through its new iPhone app and partnership with Visa for a dedicated micro-site.

These two developments are a result of the year-old local industry's exponential growth over the past year, said the company.

The iPhone app, aimed at Singa- poreans on-the-go, allows them to view and purchase deals, and monitor the deal's progress (to check whether the deal is on or off); it also eliminates the deals to merchants. With the app, consumers can purchase and redeem deals on the spot, wherever they have an Internet connection.

Said Karl, who is CEO of Groupon Singapore: "My vision is to grow and develop Groupon Singapore into a one-stop city guide for Singaporeans and tourists, for them to learn about the most interesting places and events around town.

"By introducing the iPhone app and GrouponVisa micro-site, I believe more Singaporeans will now have greater access to such information — which will result in a win-win situation for both merchants and consumers."

Karl believes that online group-coupon buying can help to drive retailers' online presence and profitability. "It is about driving online customers offline," he said.

Groupon, a website that features daily deals, sells thousands of units of single-item products or services within a day and this is how a company or brand becomes viral, he said.

In Singapore, Groupon has done successful daily deals with a growing number of merchants including larger ones such as Zuji Travel, BreadTalk, Subway and G2000, as well as malls such as The Heeren.

The introduction of the two platforms follow on the back of the evolution of deals offered by Groupon Singapore to attract consumers with varying interests — such as travel deals that were first offered in November 2010 and concert deals that were first offered in February this year, to complement ongoing food and beauty deals.

Groupon is the first online couponsales business and, according to Forbes, it is "the fastest-growing company ever". Today Groupon has more than 70 million subscribers in some 50 countries worldwide, with more than 500,000 subscribers in South-east Asia.

In Singapore, Groupon has 150,000 webpage hits per day, making it one of the top 20 websites in the city-state. According to Hitwise, a global online competitive intelligence service, it is also ranked the No.1 e-commerce website in Singapore, and is viewed twice as often as eBay Singapore and Amazon. ra

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