Today, one of the most fashionable trends of shopping is collective buying. World’s Internet is experiencing a real boom of collective purchases via the Internet. Internet allows you to introduce new technologies to the marketing and promotion of the usual schemes, earnings and attract new. Coupon sites — is one of the latest trends and one of the laws of changing market conditions. Around the world, consumers are guaranteed to receive significant discounts on different products and services from 50 to 90 % with the help of online services. This trend as well as the term «tuangou», which means «group buying», emerged in China. The scheme of such services is simple: a group of consumers goes to shop and buys the same product to obtain a discount, which each individual consumer could not obtain. Initially, the groups were organized in a circle of friends, but then the practice of collective purchases transformed to the Internet. Saving time and money of consumers, increasing the competitiveness of business entities are the main factors that contributed to the emergence of the market.
The first major service of coupon sales became an American project Groupon, launched in Chicago in 2008. Project immediately gained popularity in his native, and every month its money turnover increased significantly (faster than Google). Already in 2009, Groupon has sold more than 4 million coupons; at that moment, company received $150 million [1]. All this led to a growth of services in collective purchases worldwide. After the USA these services began to appear in Europe. In the Russia, the first site of this type was DarBerri, it is the project of Elena Maslova, which was bought by Groupon in 2010 (the sum of the deal is officially never been announced, but given the fact that the turnover of DarBerri grew several-fold each month, you can assume that it amounts to several millions of dollars). It was renamed as Groupon Russia in January 2011. Groupon’s clones appear at a rapid rate, and the father of this idea buying them in different countries. Profit from such services has become a real discovery on the Internet in recent years. Groupon buys his clones around the world. It is the right strategy, allowing the company without risks to increase its influence on the world. More recently, Google planned to buy a Groupon for a few billion dollars, but at the end the search giant was declined. As a matter of fact, today collective purchasing service is extremely popular. Each country has several leaders in the industry and a large number of resources (for example: service of collective purchases for women or resources, which allocated service by area or by type of activity). The idea is that such online services as a visit to the beauty salon or karting center with a big discount, which can reach up to 60–70 percent, appears every day at the Internet site. Naturally, people tend to buy the service for such a reasonable price, and representatives of business have profit to sell their service through the services of collective purchases with huge discount. The reason is very simple: they will get many customers immediately (sometimes hundreds). The service itself earns a percentage of sales. Couponator, acting as a link between the consumer and the seller on the market of collective purchases, creates a comfortable environment for both parties. That is, it motivates the supplier of goods or services for the provision of the highest possible discount and informs potential customers about the discounts on its website. What about payment? The buyer may make a payment through a bank card or payment terminal, after paying for the action to the personal account of the consumer comes coupon certificate with the individual code. Then, buyer presents this certificate when buying goods or services. When purchasing a coupon, you should take into account the period of its validity, the duration of discounts and the maximum number of coupons that can be purchased by one buyer. If the number of customers does not reach the enough amounts by the deadline, a collective buying is considered cancelled, and the holder of the voucher receives the money back. Many consumers could consolidate with the help of the online service; hence, they can get a great discount. As a result, new business model formed for some years, which consumers successfully used in many countries.
Each country has several leaders in this industry. The popularity of these sites is growing every day. Leaders in Europe and the United States are considered to be among such services as Groupon.com, LivingSocial.com, BuyWithMe.com and Tippr.com [2]. Despite the fact that in Kazakhstan services of collective purchases exist only for a couple of years, now they are ready to take advantage of the services (according to the number of registered accounts) about 2 million people [3]. In 2012 the number of coupon sites or services of collective purchases (SCB) reached 18 subjects in Kazakhstan. However, now some no more than 10 sites operate in our country. The main representatives of the market of collective buying: Chocolife.me, Blizzard.kz, BeSmart.kz, Biglion.kz, Dublon.kz, Zhasa.kz (Magic store from Beeline), Topkupon.kz, Kupikupon.kz. There are three companies, which are competitive enough and actively operating on the market: Chokolife.me, Besmart.kz, Blizzard.kz [3]. Companies earns from commission, which enumerates their partners (sellers). The fee of each sold certificate / coupon in Chocolife.me — from 40 % and above; in BeSmart.kz-from 40 to 50 %; in Blizzard.kz — 50 %.
The first, who presented the top internet companies in the country — «Top 25" was Forbes Kazakhstan in 2013 [4]. According to the rating, Chocolife.me is on the 8th place, which is the first among the SCB ranks. During the 24 months, since the start, to the service joined by more than 570 thousand buyers from Kazakhstan, who appreciated the power of collective buying and have already saved more than 3 billion tenge of personal budget. Every minute one purchase is made on the site, at about 3,200 service partners. Turnover of Chocolife.me is about $ 800 thousand per month. The number of investments in the capital each year is $ 105 thousand and loan of shareholders about $ 30 thousand. Coupon service was created by the model of Groupon. Further, in the second place among the competitors is BeSmart.kz, which has ninth place in the ranking. BeSmart is interested in the entire region of Central Asia and the Caucasus. According to the estimates gross revenue in the first half of 2013 was $ 420 thousand. Blizzard.kz has received the third place (in the ranking it is 15th place). Service offers discounts from 50 to 90 %. For two years, there were more than 3,000 events. In June of 2013 the biggest sale of coupons was held, about 18,000 residents of Almaty bought coupons. Blizzard — is the first project crated by the Internet companies group SibiTron. The amount of investments to the capital and loans of shareholders was estimated at about 4 million tenge [4].
Discounts and sales are not new tools on the market. The first feature of this business model is a closed registration. Investing to the aggressive marketing, which is the second feature, you pay for the result — the e-mail database, through which you can reactivate members. The third important aspect of Groupon model is the target audience. «We bet on it, the basic error of local players such as Kupilka.kz, was that they did not understand that the model works only in the 25+ age category», — says one of the founders of Chocolife.me [5].
Today with the development of economy and the market wide variety of goods and services are offered on the country’s market. In such circumstances, the should increase attractiveness of goods and services not only by improving their quality and reducing prices, but also by attracting attention of consumer to its supply of goods or services. This is especially important during the global financial crisis, when companies have to survive in difficult conditions. This is possible with the help of advertising and marketing. Advertising is the very effective tool to increase the demand for goods services. Now, successful businesses need an effective organization of promotional activities.
SCB is one of the options for effective advertising. Most of the institutions that are at the stage of promotion cooperate with SCB as one of the types of effective advertising. For example, consider the share of the new anticafe «Kak Doma». Anticafe it is a new trend in the restaurant business, got its start in Russia. The distinguishing feature of this type of cafe is a per minute charge for the spent time. Visitors can choose, for a per-minute charge: games for large companies, «Mafia», «Island of Fear», «Game of Thrones», «Arkham’s Horror», «Twister» and many others; board games: alias, jenga, monopoly, chess, backgammon and poker; cinema with films of different genres; game consoles Play Station3; tea, coffee and sweets; Wi-Fi [6].
Anticafe «Kak Doma» placed advertising to the leading website Chocolife.me for two weeks from 16.03.2015 to 30.03.2015, with the validity of the certificate until 16.04.2015. The main feature of this marketing channel is to provide a 50 % discount for buyers of certificates.
The number and types of certificates:
2 hours — 50 certificates;
3 hours — 50 certificates;
4 hours — 250 certificates;
The total number of certificates was 400 pieces.
At the end of the discount period on the site, we analyzed the sales of certificates (Picture 1).
Picture 1. Analysis of the sale of certificates of the “Kak Doma” anticafe
Based on the analysis, it can be noted that this type of advertising is very effective, during 14 days was sold 352 of the certificate, and for one month from 400 visitors 322 visitors came, and it is 80.5 %, which is a good result for attracting of new customers.
Obviously, the business model is not only justified at this stage, but will show their best results in the future, for the simple reason that commerce via the Internet is gaining popularity every year. People are willing to buy actively via the Internet, and they will do it more and more. It is important to understand what will the ranking of a new project. In general, the main players in the market have already appeared. However, these problems do not interfere the market of coupon sites to develop very dynamic. Such kind of buying goods keeps strong position not just as a separate business, but also as a tool for promotion in their markets for partner companies. Benefits for partners to cooperate with couponators are obvious: business development, increase of profits, attracting new customers and free advertising. As a result, the competitiveness of companies increases. Taking into account the international experience, we can predict the stagnation of the market of SCB. As expected, the market of couponators in the near future will enter the sphere of direct sales. However, SCB in Kazakhstan create always something new.
This a relatively new trend, which originated in Kazakhstan, not so long ago, has already shown its results. Market entities are actively using this way to attract customers. Moreover, the consumer is always ready to take advantage of high-quality products or services for a discounted price.
References:
- С миру по скидке«Журнал Коммерсантъ Секрет Фирмы», № 9 (301), 13.09.2010;
- Internet resource http://hitech.newsru.com/article/10jun2010/kupikupon
- Адильхан Айжан. «Скидочные сайты как самостоятельный рынок и как способ конкуренции» — Magazine «Рынок и Конкуренция», № 2, 2013;
- А.Кайназарова, А. Сулейменова и др. TOP-25: Рейтинг интернет-компаний Казахстана. //ForbesKazakhstan, 02.09.2013;
- Алексей Быков — «Все в шоколаде» — Magazine «ForbesKazakhstan», № 10, 2012.
- Website of the anticafe “Kak doma” — www.kak-doma.kz
