Posts Tagged ‘Group’

Cheap Flight Tickets On Group Buying Websites

Group buying sites have changed the way many consumers are buying their goods and services today. This is because these sites have come up with a way of offering deals, meaning subsidized prices for a variety of goods and services. These deals have even taken over some services of the airline industry with some major airlines signing up for their tickets to be sold on these sites.

The main objective of group buying websites is to be able to provide goods and services to their consumers that are of quality yet are cheaper than the normal price. Cheap flight tickets are one of the commodities that a variety of these sites have delved into and it has been successful so far.

In case you have been trying to find cheap flight tickets on the various mainstream airline websites with no success then you can try visiting group buying sites to get a deal on a ticket to your preferred destination.

Furthermore, websites that deal in cheap tickets are also using these avenues to attract more customers to their websites so that they will be able to keep on buying tickets from their websites anytime they need a cheap flight ticket.

These partnerships are of great benefit to both the company that is selling the ticket and the consumer; because the company is assured that within a specified time period they will have customers for their cheap flight tickets. On the other hand, the consumers are also delighted with the discount that they have received from the deal offered on the group buying site.

These group buying sites that offer the flight tickets as a deal are good especially for last minute travellers who are desperate in searching for a plane ticket. The voucher for the ticket is sent to the buyer as soon as the deal clears and all they have to do is to present a printed copy to the airline and they will be allowed to board the flight for the deal bought.

As you research on where to buy a flight ticket that is cheap you will need to compare a variety of sources that are giving you information of various flights to your preferred destination. Therefore, with all this information you will be able to make a decision that will be of benefit to both you and your family if they will be travelling with you.

Future of Group Buying

 The Chinese term for it is Tuangou, and it refers to the trend of a group of online consumers getting together offline to go into a store and get themselves a good bargain. The Chinese too supposedly love to haggle. Some savvy marketers spotted the opportunity to make a spot of money, and this led to the setting up of online portals where consumers can now be part of a group deal with complete strangers and without leaving the comfort of their computers.

Users may finally be able to afford the indulgence. The site offered a 50% discount on an US$ package to spend the day at the hotel pool with a three-course meal. The deal only went live if 30 people signed up over a three-day period to buy it.

Consumers can get a better price if they purchase in greater numbers; and that is the basic premise of group buying websites that have emerged in India and in other parts of the world in the past year. Fundamentally, the concept is not new. We are just using the power of the Internet as an aggregator to provide benefits to the consumer and the merchant. Most are relatively young companies, but investors are opening their wallets to the businesses. In addition to attracting a significant amount of investor, funding, group-buying sites are also generating M&A activity. Group buying as a business development and customer acquisition strategy makes an enormous amount of sense.

We are just using the power of the Internet as an aggregator to provide benefits to the consumer and the merchant. In a mature market, you cannot really separate business development from discounting because, for instance, the number of Americans going to restaurants is not going to change dramatically. However, in a developing market, you can most certainly focus on business development and have a short-term strategy for each merchant. Thus, the most common types of offers on most group buying sites are deals on retail services, the most popular being restaurants, spas and salons, and weekend getaways.

In the 20 century, we saw the emergence of cooperative societies all over the world. With the advent of Internet, many B2C sites have come up with the idea of group buying on the Internet. The traditional group buying cooperative societies had many disadvantages.

The idea of group buying hosted by B2C sites solves all the disadvantages of a traditional cooperative society. Many of these B2C sites have deployed sophisticated software tools for managing all the business processes. The software tools are workflow management, e-customer relation management, content management, supply chain management, chat servers, bulletin boards, database replication tools, electronic payment gateways, e-mail servers and call centers. These B2C sites tie up with manufacturers via the Internet in the form of B2B sites. They do not will find themselves left behind.

As internet phenomena go, here is the lowdown on group buying and it is currently the sweetest deal for the services industry, consumers, and the players in the online market.

All the group buying need to work on user education, as the whole idea of group discounts is very new. Especially terms like minimum sale before deal goes live, pay partially online, rest offline, extra ordinary restrictions are still alien to buyers.

 Group buying or Crowd Bargain sites as they are called are ecommerce sites that leverage social networking to find enough other buyers to become eligible for group discounts. All of them are getting the deals but are yet to get buyers. Most importantly, spreading Word of Mouth for local businesses through social media, many group-buying sites have suddenly mushroomed recently in what seems to be a me-too aping of the Groupon model. While it caters to the same group of end users, it does not suffer from the initial investment problems that plague a local search model. The product is not technologically complex either and just needs a dedicated sales team bringing deals in steadily. All these points make it especially attractive for a low-capital startup.

 The theory of a two-sided network states that growth in users on one side spurs growth in users on the other. While Groupon is not exactly a network in the obvious sense, the growth in users on both sides directly affects the business. More customers translates to more deals going live and more businesses translates to more deal types and hence more customers. Most importantly, both sides see value.

In addition to this, the model is also financially sound a group bargaining sites typically buy inventory with businesses upfront and sell it but pay the businesses only after the fulfillment. The model ensures that in the end, they will always have extra cash.

While this clearly shows that the model, although very simple, is very effective, it remains to be seen whether any of the current players in India will really see the uptake that Groupon has seen in the US. A few matters of concern in the Indian context are as follows.

 You definitely need to have a steady flow of deals to make this a sustainable business. There is hope a good sales team may still get the business flourishing.

Openness of businesses to adopt the model and range of deals Openness to adoption among businesses remains to be seen. A larger variety of deals is critical to growing the consumer base and is sales force. Group buying sites have accumulated 350,000 registered users in just over six months of operations.

It is interesting to see so many startups mushrooming in this space but it remains to be seen which one will stay on to see the kind of success that Groupon has seen. Group buying sites are trying to bring customers together socially, in addition to harnessing the bargaining power of groups. That is where social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook come in. India could ultimately be a more fertile ground for group buying than Western markets. All the existing websites group-buying sites are attracting significant investment, but they also benefit from a relatively simple business model, experts note. The websites feature promotions with a predetermined discount and a minimum number of buyers. The limited period creates a sense of urgency, prompting impulse purchases. All buyers must provide credit card information only charged if the deal is live. Predicts margins will expand because suddenly the merchant’s dependency will increase. Technology is a hindrance. Close to 30% of transactions fail at the payment gateway, With 550 million subscribers, mobile play is an extremely important part of the business, predicts that those sites that survive will be winning by attrition, with the last man standing being the one who has burnt the most money. Group buying is more as a transition strategy working with customer data. The websites probably have a 10-year run of extra profitability in business development for their clients. Many of the group-buying sites work by negotiating deals with local merchants and promising to deliver crowds in exchange for discounts. The sites differ from other buying sites in how they work and what they do to reward users who share deals.

Several of these group-buying sites are available nationwide, mostly in big cities focused on Groupon.com, which is available in 42 cities, and LivingSocial.com, which works in 13 cities. Both are popular in Washington, D.C., if group-buying sites are not popular near you yet, they may soon start working, welcome to the world of group buying, Internet style, where the power of the Web can be utilized to offer surprisingly large discounts to a sizable number of people for things they actually want to buy.

Woot.com, a pioneer of group buying on the Web started in 2004. Another site called Tippr.com works in Seattle New York-based Gilt.com and Ideeli.com focus on selling high fashion items

Wal-Mart recently announced that it is experimenting with a form of group buying through a Facebook offering called CrowdSaver — if enough potential shoppers click the “like” button on a proposed discount, Wal-Mart goes ahead with it. If anyone has national and international reach when it comes to shopping, it is Wal-Mart, and the entry of the giant retailer and its ilk could make the space even more competitive in the future, and put pressure on both Groupon and LivingSocial to continue innovating.