Group buying industry is booming in Australia according recent research of Telsyte (business unit of Gibson Quai-AAS Consulting) and the market will grow 284% this year.
The research covers over 20 group buying web sites that offer heavily discounted group deals for Australians. Over 79% of the market share reported to be taken by four leading players (Spreets, Scoopon, Jump On It, and Cudo).
This figures correspond quite well with the study that we did last fall.
Telsyte makes some interesting forecasts about future industry trends, namely (my comments are in the brackets):
• Arrival of large online multi-nationals such as Google, Facebook and Groupon into the local group buying market (actually GroupOn is already here).
• Agencies representing merchants in deal negations and analytics.
• Proliferation of mobile group buying applications (at least Scoopon and one new smaller – CrowdSauce already have iPhone apps).
• Local media publishers entering the group buying industry through white-label software platforms, acquisitions, or distribution partnerships (we also already see it, with Telstra/Sensis that launched YellowPage Offers).
Some more details about research avalable at Telsyte web site