Groupon Statistics And Facts For 2021
Groupon is an American e-commerce giant headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The company was started in November 2008 by Andrew Mason. The company started as an idea of turning people’s bargaining power into a mass model, became Groupon, after 1-million-dollar funding provided by Eric Lefkofsky. Rich Williams took over as the CEO in November 2015.
Overview of Groupon Statistics, Users And Facts For 2021
Groupon provides daily deals to consumers on purchases in retail for restaurants, theatres, and several other areas. Groupon serves as a platform for businesses to market their products and services at discounted prices and acts as an additional medium for the marketing efforts of these businesses. Although the company started its services in a handful of cities in the United States, since then, it has become a highly sought after national as well as an international brand.
Growth
- After Groupon started in Chicago, it moved to three major cities: Boston, New York City, and Toronto.
- Till 2009 the company was only operational across 28 US cities and markets. In early 2010, it moved to its first international markets in European countries, including but not limited to Germany, UK, and Switzerland.
- In 2011, Groupon made its move to China in a joint venture and launched ‘Gaopeng,’ which ultimately merged with Futuan.
- It entered the MENA region by launching Groupon UAE in 2011.
- Groupon got two major offers in its initial years of launching. Yahoo offered 3 billion dollars in 2010 for the acquisition, and Google offered 6 billion dollars later in the same year. However, Groupon rejected both offers and went ahead with its IPO. At the time of IPO, it had enjoyed a valuation of over 16 billion dollars, but its current valuation stands at 1.4 billion dollars.
- Groupon has been downloaded almost 200 million times on mobile app stores ever since its application lunching.
- Groupon beats every other competitor in the market with the number of coupons provided. More than 1 billion coupons have redeemed to date.
- As of 2018, 72% of the sales on Groupon are from its app itself.
- The company currently has over 6,000 employees. It is also presently operational in around 15 countries.
Growth in Active Users
- Within the first six months of its launch, Groupon had 40 thousand active customers who had purchased a discount coupon deal.
- A year after, in 2010, this number reached 2.38 million active customers.
- However, 2011 was the year when the number steeped up to 23 million active customers. The company has seen staggering growth in the number of these active users since then amidst national and international popularity. Press coverage from the Ellen Degeneres Show and New York Times aided the popularity of this growing brand.
- In 2012, there were more than 38 million active consumers, which increased to 42.6 million consumers in 2013.
- 2014 again saw a considerable increase in the number to 51.6 million clients. However, around the same time in 2015, this decreased to 48.6 million active customers.
- Since then, the figures have been mostly in the same ballpark, with no substantial growth in the numbers.
- In 2016, the count was 44.9 million, which slightly increased to 48.3 million in 2017, and again, 49.3 million customers in 2018.
- Last year, the figure stayed at 46.2 million active users.
Acquisitions and Partnerships
- Since the company has been operational for over a decade and has had tremendous growth, it is not surprising that Groupon has acquired over 40 companies to date.
- In 2010, May, Groupon acquired European MyCityDeal, in June they acquired South American ClanDescuento, in August they had another acquisition Japanese Qpod, and November they walked away with Russian Darberry (Aussian) and Singaporean Beeconomic.
- Similarly, in 2011 it acquired three other counterpart companies in India, Hong Kong, and Malaysia to expand its geographical presence. In the same year in August, it also acquired a consulting firm Obtiva to improve its technological capabilities.
- In 2012, Groupon again went on the lookout for competitors in the market for its model, and they acquired three more companies, two of which were Breadcrumb and Savored. These acquisitions provided Groupon unparalleled access to food and restaurant deals.
- In 2013, it made three more acquisitions; Glassmap, Boomerang, and Blink.
- However, one of the significant acquisitions in its history yet was in 2014 when it acquired the fashion company Ideeli for 43 million dollars.
- LivingSocial, a major competitor for Groupon, had more than 230 million in funding, whereas Groupon has relatively lesser funding at 170 million dollars. While Groupon had an average of 750,000 visitors daily, the next best- LivingSocial was at 450,000 unique visitors. After almost 8 years of competition, in 2016, Groupon finally acquired LivingSocial, thus gaining a higher market share in the US.
- In May 2018, Groupon entered into the cloud markets with the acquisition of UK based company Bristol, for 65 million dollars.
- Its latest acquisition in 2019 was Presence AI, and news suggests Groupon might be looking at acquiring Yelp shortly.
Groupon User Demographics
Groupon has not failed to maintain a steady increase in the number of users. Moreover, specific trends are observed as far as their customer base is concerned. Below discussed are the spikes in the number of active users who purchased coupons with Groupon and the trends in the demographics of these consumers:
- 90% of the online site traffic of the company comes from the United States. While Canada contributes to around 4.7% of the online traffic, other countries do not compare to the popularity of the company in the USA.
- Out of the total active users of Groupon, around 50% of the customers are from out of the USA.
- Out of all the subscribers, 77% comprises of women.
- Groupon appeals to the young age group, with 68% of its users between the ages of 18 and 34 years.
- The comparatively wealthy group of users make most of Groupon, with 70% of the consumers having 50,000$ or more annual income ad 40% making more than $100,000 annually.
Groupon Coupons
- By the end of 2010, 9 million people had bought coupons on Groupon. The number further increased to 16 million at the beginning of 2011.
- On an average, the deals offered on Groupon have about 350 sales and generate a revenue close to 9,000 dollars.
- As opposed to the retail prices, Groupon coupons offer an average 56% discount.
- Globally, the company reaped maximum sales from the Chicago region, where the company established and started its operations.
- The most successful Groupon coupon till date is a voucher that offered $25 for shoes and clothes that cost about $50 on Nordstrom Rack. The deal started its operation in November 2010 at USA and had 623,000 purchase hits, which roughly translated to a 15.6-million-dollar revenue.
- Another highly successful campaign is the 50% deal at Starbucks.
- In 2015, Groupon did an approximate of 200 million deals for the year.
- More than 370,000 deals are regularly featuring across the platforms of Groupon.
- Every day, 547,000 Groupon coupons are redeemed, which is approximately 22,000 coupons every hour.
- The most famous Sushi deal took place in Minneapolis, and the next best was in Houston.
Competitor Analysis
Although in its initial years of operations, Groupon competed with the likes of LivingSocial, GILT, and Buy With Me, as it grew to an e-commerce giant, its competitors changed to more prominent players in the industry. After its acquisition of LivingSocial, Groupon now competes with the big names in the industry.
- Top competitors of the company now include RetailMeNot, Amazon, Walmart, DealsofAmerica, etc.
- Amazon is the most significant player in the space with a market cap of more than 1 trillion dollars as compared to the latest revenues posted by Groupon at 2.4 billion dollars. Walmart, on the other hand, has a market standing of 275 billion dollars. Although RetailMeNot is much smaller at less than a billion dollars, its niche is similar to that of Groupon. It offers coupons for consumers and merchants in a variety of segments.
- Whereas Groupon has a little over 8,000 employees now, it does not come anywhere close to its counterparts Walmart which has more than 2.2 million employees, and Amazon has around 750,000 employees. On the other hand, the much smaller RetailMeNot has only 600 employees.
- Amazon has 13 marketplaces worldwide, but each of its markets has a strong presence in that country and hold a majority of the market share. RetailMeNot is present in Canada and the United Kingdom apart from the United States. In the meantime, Walmart has a presence in 27 countries with its partners and has 10 countries where it has an e-commerce store.
- RetailMeNot had over 580 million site visitors in the past year. Amazon has 2.15 billion desktop and mobile visitors.
- Walmart has 308 million mobile and desktop visitors.
Marketing
Groupon connects buyers to sellers by offering them deals worth their money. The model is that each business that lists on Groupon has to provide around 50% discount to their consumers, and then with each deal purchased, Groupon gets 50% of the revenue made on that deal. The model is convenient for businesses trying to get their name out there at an additional marketing cost.
The model worked well initially, but there was a sharp decline in the number of repeat consumers because most of them were looking for one-off discount offers. So, in the past couple of years, Groupon has moved to a card linked model wherein it offers cash back to the consumer when they link a credit card to their ID and then make purchases with it. The cashback amount varies from 5-40%. This changed model allows customers to use their coupons more than once.
- In 2010, Groupon spent 290 million dollars in marketing itself globally for its presence across 45 countries. Although this is a huge marketing budget and falls in the likes of Apple and Visa, then, a majority of this was spent on online advertising, and less than 16 million spent on TV advertisements. Since this was a significant scaling era, the marketing expense for global and national coverage was 93% of the total revenue generated for Groupon.
- In 2011, the marketing expense increased to 768.5 million dollars owing to specific TV coverage on prime time shows. At this point, marketing expense was around 47% of the revenue generated.
- In 2012, the company could reduce the marketing expenditures to 336.9 million dollars, which was still a high budget and formed more than 14% of the total revenue.
- In 2013, the marketing expense was much lesser than the previous year at 214.8 million dollars, and it stood at 8.3% of the revenue generated that year.
- By the end of the year 2014, although the marketing expense was slightly higher than in 2013, at 269 million dollars, it was the same percentage when compared to the revenue generated that year.
- In 2015, Groupon had 255 million dollars in marketing costs, which again roughly comprised 8.2% of the revenue generated. The statistics indicated that it was spending $44 on marketing for every new customer, which reduced to $21 in 2016, wherein the marketing spend was 352 million dollars.
- In 2017, Groupon spent 400 million dollars in marketing, which formed 30% of the gross profits that year.
- In 2018, Groupon spent 395 million dollars in online marketing and TV commercials for promotional activities. The same year, to get more sellers to come on board, Groupon partnered with GrubHub, Viator, and Live Nation for various areas of food, travel, and events. It divided the revenues gained from these platforms with them. Ultimately, the cost came to around 30% of the gross profits.
Revenue and Profits
- In 2009, Groupon started with a revenue of 14.5 million dollars, which increased to almost 313 million dollars in 2010.
- However, the 5-time increase in revenue, which stood at 1.6 billion dollars in 2011, made Groupon a name to be noticed in the e-commerce space.
- In 2012, the company made 2.3 billion dollars in revenue, which stayed around the same value in 2013.
- In 2014, the revenue figures increased to 2.8 billion dollars, and the following year, it grew to 2.9 billion dollars.
- In 2016, the company crossed the 3-billion-dollar revenue mark, and since then, the revenue has decreased.
- The following year, the total global revenue was 2.8 billion dollars for Groupon.
- As per the latest reports in 2018, the global revenue of the company was 2.6 billion dollars, on which the net income was 2 million dollars.
- Post that, the quarter 3 global revenue for the organization globally was 495.6 million dollars.
- When it comes to profits, the company has made significant losses since its operation. From the beginning of 2009, the first net income was a negative 1.3 million dollars.
- Subsequently, for the following years, in 2010, it was -413.5 million dollars, and in 2011 it was -297.7 million dollars.
- It was at the end of 2012 that it seemed that the company was finally en-route to becoming profitable. In 2012, Groupon reported -51 million net income, which reduced further to -88 million dollars in 2013.
- 2014 was again a year of losses, with almost $64 million.
- 2015 brought a glimmer of hope for the organization when it finally showed a positive performance of 33.6 million dollars at the end of the year. However, the company could not continue the momentum and again reported losses in the following year with -183 million dollars net income.
- At the end of 2017, it was barely positive in terms of net income with a 26-million-dollar income reported over the 2.8-billion-dollar revenue.
- 2018 although successfully profitable, showed a net profit of just 2 million dollars over the 2.6 billion dollars in revenue.
Conclusion
Groupon has struggled with its high discount and low return model. Although the model has made tremendous success, specifically in the US markets, its cost of operation continued to be expensive due to unimaginable marketing costs. In recent years, Groupon has shifted its focus from highly discounted deals and is moving to a model that focuses on getting more repeat customers for its partner merchants. The company is finally doing positive net income in the past couple of years. The new model shows positive changes, as it focuses much on decreased marketing expenses coupled with a shift in the revenue models, which are working fine for the company as well as its partner merchants.
Reference Links
https://www.crunchbase.com/search/acquisitions/field/organizations/num_acquisitions/groupon
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273245/cumulative-active-customers-of-groupon/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273251/groupons-annual-global-revenue/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/273252/groupon-annual-net-income-and-loss/
https://www.similarweb.com/website/groupon.com#referrals
https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2016/09/06/are-increased-marketing-efforts-really-helping-groupon/#4bdcea01b4d2
https://s22.q4cdn.com/731250486/files/doc_financials/annual/2012_Annual_Report.pdf
