Group Buy via Internet

I first heard about Groupon when I attended a conference at Jerusalem last year (2010). Groupon, as in 'Group Coupon' was touted as an upcoming trend setter for the Internet commerce sector.

True enough, there was a flood of stories about Groupon and its clones in the subsequent months, and viola, Groupon is now in Singapore!


Groupon entered the Singapore market via a purchase of Beeconomic (the deal rumoured to be in the range of millions). Groupon.sg is now very active and there have been a number of different deals on the site.

But other than Groupon, there are many other Singapore group buy sites. The one that caught my attention is Deal.com.sg. For some reason (perhaps due to different target audience groups), I am more attracted to the deals on deal.com.sg. Maybe Groupon / Beeconomic has young female audience in mind, while travel and food are more attractive to me.


These sites have also utilised the social networks, e.g. Deal.com.sg is on Facebook, to create groups for the viral marketing effect. Afterall, group buy and viral marketing should easily go hand in hand together. Other than social networks, the sites would also send out email alerts of their latest deals, and as I understand, there are even mobile applications on iPhones and such to allow for 'instant buy' via the mobile apps. Innovative!


However, as with any Internet trends, there are also issues about sites dying off and the customers not getting what they bought. We heard about such stories in China, where the concept of 'group buy' a.k.a 'tuan gou' gave birth to hundreds of sites and some have since died. Of course, China is a big market with its own unique set of consumer norms and Internet culture.

Hopefully the Singapore sites can survive well, and continue to offer such attractive discounts for our local shoppers. I think we need alternatives that offer better deals throughout the year, instead of just during the Singapore Sale or year end holiday sales.