Online daily deals – a smart way to shop and save
In the US, online
shopping is increasingly becoming popular among the price-conscious consumers
because of the convenience of online product research, comparison shopping, and
competitive pricing offered by retailers. The major reasons driving the online shopping
across the world is cash-on-delivery facility, as well as discounts &
offers provided by the online retailers. Companies offering daily onlineshopping deals have reported astronomical revenue growth over the past two
years since they provide discounts at local and nationwide businesses. These
companies are taking advantage of the lower disposable incomes of people and
offering them hard-to-resist shopping deals to sell their goods and services.
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| Saveasaurus - Daily deals online |
Some online shopping websitesoffer discounts on goods and services for a single day only. Customers can look
forward to a new deal every day. These discounts are often more than 50%, which
shoppers perceive as a huge benefit given that a variety of goods and services
that is there for the taking. Daily deals websites have witnessed immense
revenue growth in recent years due to many factors. The industry, which was
virtually unheard of in 2008, is expected to be worth about $1.7 billion in
2012, representing an annualized growth rate of about 304.2% during the
five-year period.
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| Saveasaurus - Your Best Deals |
Daily deal companies typically offer
discounts on goods and services for a very short period of 24-36 hours. Needless
to say, these daily online deals are refreshed every day for the benefit of
customers. Goods sold by the website are in the form of online deal coupons,
which a consumer can redeem at local merchants for the physical good or
service. The daily online coupons contain a coupon code, which is a random
group of numbers or a barcode. The coupon code can be scanned at the RFIDdevice at the POS outlet at the local merchant where the customer takes
delivery of the goods or services that he/she has shopped for online.
Daily deal sites galore!
After the financial downturn, consumers are
demanding value of money and are increasingly shopping for daily deals online
through group buying sites. Daily deal sites are mostly focussed on getting
consumers introduced to new activities, restaurants, consumer product goods
(CPG), or even national campaigns. For instance, General Mills was the first to
use Groupon for offering a local CPG deal. The deal was for $20 for $40 worth
of coupons on various General Mills products. The daily deal, which was
localised in San Francisco and Minneapolis, was a huge hit and sold out within
hours. Indeed, buying has come of age through group buying sites, which is a
win-win situation for both consumers and merchants offering daily deals.
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| Saveasaurus - Shopping daily Deals |
Many sites offer daily deals in a few
localities. These sites boast of local experts to identify local attractions
and offer value-based customized deals to shoppers. For instance, LivingSocial,
a daily deal group buying site, ran a campaign for Visa card holders that allow
them to gift a deal to a friend while purchasing at the site. They also have a
referral system that credits $10 when you introduce a friend.
New entrants in this
space are sweetening the deals offered to customers through sub-deals. For
instance, BuyWithMe offers you discounted prices for a haircut. The shopper can
avail a bigger discount for a haircut and facial! Many daily deal sites are
hooking up with social networking sites to increase their promotional
activities. For instance, Jasmere gifts the featured deal to a Facebook fan
page member for free every weekday. With AtCost, shoppers can easily add group
buys, daily deals, and flash sales directly on their blog or the Facebook fan
page.
Other daily deal sites
such as Dealmap function like a social aggregator of daily deals in a
particular city. They collect all the best local deals from the largest number
of sources and make them easy to find for visitors from the respective cities.
Some daily deal sites
also offer comprehensive insights and purchase patterns of various deals on
offer at their site. This will provide a new visitor a bird’s eye view of the
most popular daily deals in a particular area as well as other important
statistics such as purchaser experience, quantity breakdown and percentage
sales per hour.
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| Saveasaurus - Super Discounts |
Most of the daily dealsites offer the option for shoppers to set price alerts for a particular item
listing. This facility alerts the shopper via email when the product gets
listed at the desired price point. Apart from flexible purchase plans, shoppers can opt to take a
sneak peek of tomorrow’s deal today and can also buy older listings if the
items are still in stock. Some daily deal sites offer unique options. For
instance, Shnoop is a daily deal site offering only one product at a deeply
discounted sale. However, they also give their visitors a chance to buy the
previous days’ item as well until it is in stock. However, with some daily deal
sites, it is a slightly different story. Once the day ends, the product listed
on the website is replaced with a new deal and the old deals cannot be availed.
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