Groupon Now! is a spin on the traditional Groupon model of offering one deal a day in your local area. Instead of just one deal a day, it offers local deals at any moment of the day. If you’re walking down the street and are wondering what kinds of deals are near you, just pop open the Groupon NOW website or the mobile app and punch in your location.
You’ll then be presented with a list of deals in your area. Since your payment information is saved with your Groupon account you can just tap on a deal to purchase it. The app will give you a scannable barcode that the shop offering the deal can read using the Groupon NOW app.
Groupon Now! gives business owners the ability to offer deals at specific times of the day. This will enable them to schedule deals to encourage visitors during normally slow business hours.
Currently the service is only live in Chicago, where I was able to find deals from local businesses in a variety of categories. A small timer shows you how long you have to redeem the deal and where the deal is located. As an example, this should enable people to find a lunch deal near them that is available specifically during their lunch hour.
On the merchant side of things, there is a new administration page for those looking to set up a Groupon Now! account. It explains the process for merchants looking to move into offering the new timed deals.
The process for creating deals is simple, with a clean interface for creating your deal and a calendar to help you schedule it. Since I’m in an area where Groupon Now! has not yet launched, I can’t actually set my deal to go live. I can define the deal however, giving it a retail value and a discount. The calculator shows you the merchant’s take and the Groupon fee and allows you to specify certain locations that the deal is active at. This would be good for specifying different deals at various branches of a business.
At the bottom of the interface you can set the exact time periods that you would like to offer the deal. It looks like a particular deal can only be offered during one time period a day although there is nothing stopping you from creating multiple similar deals each day. You can have the deal repeat each day automatically or until a certain day. The deal configuration also gives you the ability to sell no more than a certain number of deals in each day.
In addition to scanning the customer’s coupon with a mobile device there is an interface that will allow merchants to enter the code manually.
Groupon Now! looks like a solid addition to the Groupon product and one that should allow consumers to find deals more flexibly and closer to where they are. The merchant benefits are also welcome as carefully timed Groupon deals could contribute to effectively managing customer flow and increasing income in typically slow time periods.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Groupon Now has already just tripled Groupon’s value.
I like this a looooot.
Chicago before NYC? :(
also, i’m surprised this took so long!
Nice! groupon is jsut cool like that. Good stuff.
http://www.anon-web.es.tc
This is a lot more interesting/sustainable than the daily deals
This is going to help Groupon keep business. It’s a great way to provide people with savings while they are on the go.
A great site to use to find the deals and sales in your area is http://www.dailydealpool.com. They send you a daily email with the best discounts, so you can always find the best savings to use every day.
@Patrick de Laive Nice analysis… can’t rule out Google places too, you can also add coupons to your listing… don’t think Google is that far from arriving on the scene…
@Patrick de Laive Is Groupon also paying 30% to Apple as it looks like an in-app purchase
@Patrick de Laive Is Groupon also paying 30% to Apple as it looks like an in-app purchase?
It’s more than a little interesting to me that the fastest growing company in the history of the world is making a significant change to their business. I suspect they will emphasize this and slowly move away from their dangerous volume couponing model. I just finished two weeks of research on online couponing and was stunned by the number of negative references to Groupon. Even when I used the search term “Groupon Success Stories”, the references were almost all negative. You will find the results of my research, “Small Business Guide to Online Computing” at http://www.406strategies.com/?p=3211
I’ve been a regular user and enjoying an identical site since the late summer of last year, ZapHour.com in Portland, Oregon. The Zaphour site mentions “patent pending” at the top – wonder why Groupon has been making so much noise about patenting their offering if an identical concept has been on the market 9 months or so?
Agreed, really don’t understand why merchants are really driving this crazy deals… I can understand a merchant doing it once or twice to get some customers to work on for future revenue but to run such campaigns regularly is loss making for all merchants.
There are several other players doing this better than the large players who are just starting to enter the market e.g. cellfire in US, blyke in UK, Coupies in Germany etc etc…..
And Groupon Now focuses on time & location — so its for pulling customers to keep the fill rate high so if I want to eat at 1pm (busy period), most probably I’ll find the most least deals…. have to have lunch at 3pm to get the 50% off!!!
..they will struggle
@Shyam Subramanyan Its not sustainable…. As a business owner, would you really run campaigns regularly only to make a loss! Groupon keeps 50% of the deal value e.g. if I am offering 50% off a $100 deal, Groupon keeps $25 and I only get $25 — even when business is not generating customers, I wouldn’t want to attract customers only to make a loss – there is no guarantee that these customers will return to pay at full price the next time!
Yes I agree. I am here in Korea running BonusBee Co. which is quite similar to Groupon Now. BonusBee is a iPhone application for real time deals. We don’t sell specific products like Groupon does, but we let customers buy real time based invitation card for 50 cents which gives them to have rights to get 30% discount from the total purchase at the store. Since this business model is extremely instant, customers wouldn’t bother to look over all the deals on the list. Can u guys tell me about your opinions which one would be better based on your own ideas?
Its true now a days we can find any dame thing on the internet with quite ease. However just think is there anyone who can offer you maximum discount on any product which you wish to own?Well Bid4dream is here to realize your dreams now. Now its possible to grab maximum discount on any product which you wish to buy. All you have to do is to grab the opportunity.