Posted on

Groupon claims to secure the biggest share in group buying web traffic

As ITwire reported, Groupon Australia (trades as StarDeals.com.au) declared last week that just in few months after launch Stardeals.com.au web site managed to acquire more web traffic than any competing web sites (biggest competitors are reportedly Scoopon, Spreets, Cudo, JumpOnIt/LivingSocial). Representative of US based pioneer of group purchases industry refers to Hitwise traffic statistic.

However competitors, namely Cudo, doubt that this statistic reflects the reality and Hitwise data has several major flaws: limited coverage (no Telstra and Optus for example), traffic is measured at providers (not users) so it is easier to use bots and tricky ads to inflate the statistic.

In my personal opinion these doubts look reasonable.

Posted on

Scoopon got massive investments

SmartCompany reported today that Catch of the Day (a venture of Leibovich brothers which Scoopon is a part of) received $80 million investment from James Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings, Seek co-founder Andrew Bassat and American hedge fund Tiger Global. The Catch of the Day founders will keep controlling stake, but Tiger’s Lee Fixel and Seek’s Jason Lenga will join the board.

Scoopon is the last from three leading group buying web sites in Australia that was acquired or got external funding. Two others are Spreets (now part of Yahoo!7 and JumpOnIt – was purchased by LivingSocial).

Posted on

Typical group buying web site user: 45-60 yo woman

According statistic from online research company ViziSense cited in recent “The Australian Financial Review” article 60% of group buying web site users are women, most of users are aged 45 to 60.

Scoopon users tend to be younger, 36-44.

ViziSense analyzed audience of Spreets, Cudo, Scoopon, JumpOnIt, Spreets and OurDeal.

Posted on

Telsyte estimates group buying market in Australia $63M in 2010 and projects $242M in 2011

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

Posted on

Smart Company about Group Buying

I admit that noticed this interesting article a bit late (it is dated end of November), but later is better than never. So, Patrick Stafford from SmartCompany wrote a good, comprehencive review of group buying industry in Australia.
It’s a pretty long article that gives ABC of the group buying model and reviews the state of market in Australia, so I would recommend everybody interested in the industry to check it. Especially agreeable, that Patric cited our research (while unfortunately forget to put a link to it).
Some most interesting quotes from the article:

  • Spreets, JumpOnIt and Scoopon are biggest players (opinion match our research);
  • Cudo is expected to die soon;
  • Groupon will come to Australia soon;
Posted on

Australian group buying web sites comparative analysis report is published

The research announced in our previous post is ready! You will find the way to download the full report (17 pages PDF file) at the end of the post.

Key findings (extracts from the report)

The chart below shows the volume of the deals that 5 group buying web sites reported for the period of the research (01 Sep to 25 Oct 2010):

Group Buying Web sites in Australia, deals volume Septembe - October 2010
Continue reading “Australian group buying web sites comparative analysis report is published”

Posted on

Who is the biggest player on the hot group buying market in Australia? Comparative research.

After the phenomenal success of GroupOn, new group buying (group purchasing) web sites had started to appear virtually every day. It is extremely hot trend and even in Australia we have many of them. One day I asked myself, who is the leader of this market? Who close deals more often, attract more consumers and get highest volume of the transaction? So when I got some spare time, I conducted a small research to answer this questions and find out more insights.

Continue reading “Who is the biggest player on the hot group buying market in Australia? Comparative research.”