Groupon, at its heart, is a merchant oriented company. The problem is, Groupon does not understand this.
Every single one of us has limited time. Because of this we should be very cautious about how we decide to spend our time. For the past 8 years I have been very motivated because of the things I had the opportunity to work on in Groupon. None of those things relate to Groupon’s mission though.
Groupon’s mission statement is To be the daily habit in local commerce. It is very consumer centric. We want people to use Groupon on a daily basis to look up things in a neighbourhood. We want to be a place where you can discover a new restaurant. A SPA salon where you can meet with your friends. Life can be a struggle and therefore it is important to have a way to forget about it for a moment. To experience something new. Groupon provides this but so are FourSquare, Google Maps, Facebook and Yelp to name a few. What makes Groupon different? Discount. Is Groupon’s mission statement to help poor students? Is Groupon’s mission to help families with low income to experience cities they live in in a more affordable way? No. Groupon’s mission is to make people buy daily on Groupon.
Now let me tell you a story about Groupon I have seen every single day for the past 8 years. I have seen a company that focuses on merchants. Building a business is hard work. For some people this is a dream. For others it is a way to make a living. They do that because they want to share something with communities. They do that because they want to earn money for retirement. They do it because they want to send kids to college. Whatever the motivation is - they are reaching to us for help. What Groupon has that mentioned above companies do not have? Human connection. The online advertisement is complicated and easy to exploit. Simple bot can make you pay for your ads with no return on investment. Groupon is different. Our deals bring people in. We don’t promise that the customers will come more than once but if your business is good then chances are they will stick around. We bring people together. Merchants and customers.
I have met a few Groupon’s merchants in my life. Not all of them were happy about working with Groupon. All of them decided to work with us because they thought that giving a discount in order to attract customers is a good investment. For some of them we have changed their lives.
Groupon, at its heart, is a merchant oriented company. The biggest problem is, Groupon does not understand this.