1 Groupon, 3 Countries, 27 Wannabes (Part3: China)

The concept of group purchase (or Tuan Gou in Chinese, 团购) is nothing new in China. Before Groupon, Chinese were already familiar to the idea of forming groups online to look for bulk-purchase discount. Back then, purchases used to focus more on home improvement goods, tour packages, etc.

Now, with Groupon's concept of "daily-deal", this group-buying craze just caught on like wild fire. Besides usual deals from restaurant, pub, KTV, spa, hairdressing, etc, there are many other deals that try to capture that spending dollars. Some interesting deals below. If this trend continues, you may basically buy anything via these Chinese group-purchase sites.

To capture net traffic, many companies organised lucky draws to attract subscribers. One deal even put the price as -$2; meaning it is giving out spending credits if you sign up. Guess it is the Period of Warring States for group-buying.

Below is a snapshot of some interesting deals up for grab.

China 中国团购
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1 Groupon, 3 Countries, 27 Wannabes (Part2: Australia)

Today, we go over to the continent Down Under.

This "daily-deep-discounted-deal" or "social-group-buying" trend took off in Australia easily. Offers range from restaurant promotions to surfing lesson discounts. And if you find it difficult to navigate through the various sites and look for real offer that you need, there are aggregators such as AllTheDeals.com.au and Buyii.com.au.

What happens if business owners sell more coupons than they can realistically handle? ...There are reported cases where buyers had to wait for 6 months to get an appointment. Guess group-buying sites have to work with business owners to control traffic to ensure quality and, more importantly, repeat patronage.

Australia
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1 Groupon, 3 Countries, 27 Wannabes (Part1: USA)

Groupon. The fastest growing e-business company ever.

It simply markets daily deep discount deal, activated if a threshold number of people signed up. It taps on the "viral marketing" power of online social networks. And it turns an initial "seed money" of $1 million in November 2008 to a reported Google's bidding price of $5-6 billion today. Not bad for a 2-year's job.

As Groupon continues to expand its reach to cities worldwide at a frantic pace, countless competitors and wannabes are also emerging and trying to capture part of the market share. Here is a compilation of these group-buying sites in three different continents.

Afternote: The use of coupon as a promotional tool for stores to get shoppers in the door is nothing new. The "Groupon" concept focuses on the power of "daily deep discounted deal" (more than 50% is the expectation), "group buying" and "social networks". For other types of coupon sites, there are Coupon Sherpa (for printed, online or mobile coupons), Thrillist (daily email on local offers) and many other grocery coupon sites.

United States

Online Shopping - China Top 13 (中国网购精选13)

Let's do some more online shopping. Today, we go over to China and look at the top ranking e-malls.

中国网络购物 China Online Shopping www.taobao.com （淘宝网） 淘宝网 - 阿里巴巴旗下网站，是亚洲最大的网络零售商圈。占据中国国内电子商务80%以上的市场份额...Started as a C2C auction site, this online (B2C) shopping website is operated by the Chinese B2B giant, Alibaba Group. It has more than 80% of China's e-Commerce market share. www.360buy.com （京东商城） 京东商城 - 中国"3C"(电脑，手机，家电)，及日用百货网上的购物商城。Focusing on "3C" (Computer, Communication, and Consumer Electronic), this online retailer is one of the most popular E-Business websites in China. www.dangdang.com （当当网） 当当网 - 中国网上书店，由著名国内出版机构，以及美国数间投资基金集团共同投资成立。中国网上书店还包括：卓越网，99网上书城，中国图书网等。Based largely on Amazon model, Dangdang.com is China's largest online Chinese book retailer. With its recent IPO price shot up almost 90%,