In recent years an increasing number of small service providers (restaurants, spas, etc.) have decided to run social couponing campaigns to enhance brand awareness, attract new customers and increase sales. Only few studies have been conducted to investigate merchants’ satisfaction with the effectiveness of social couponing. More importantly, available results are mostly based on data collected among merchants that have run their social couponing campaigns through the largest, global daily deals sites, such as Groupon and Living Social. Nonetheless in the last few years, new local, white-label deals sites have entered the market. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether merchants’ satisfaction with the effectiveness of social couponing campaigns is different when using a local daily deal site instead of a global one. Data were collected through two surveys conducted in the Italian context: the first among 157 Italian merchants that had used Groupon; the second among 106 merchants that sold their coupons through Kauppa, a local daily deals site operating in six Italian provinces. The results show similar levels of overall satisfaction for the two samples. Nonetheless significant differences between Groupons’ and Kauppa’s merchants emerged regarding the drivers of their satisfaction. Hence merchants may decide to use either a global or a local daily deals site, depending on the specific objectives they intend to achieve through couponing.
Local vs. Global Social Couponing Sites: A Study of Merchants’ Satisfaction
CASSIA, FABIO;UGOLINI, Marta Maria
2014-01-01
Abstract
In recent years an increasing number of small service providers (restaurants, spas, etc.) have decided to run social couponing campaigns to enhance brand awareness, attract new customers and increase sales. Only few studies have been conducted to investigate merchants’ satisfaction with the effectiveness of social couponing. More importantly, available results are mostly based on data collected among merchants that have run their social couponing campaigns through the largest, global daily deals sites, such as Groupon and Living Social. Nonetheless in the last few years, new local, white-label deals sites have entered the market. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether merchants’ satisfaction with the effectiveness of social couponing campaigns is different when using a local daily deal site instead of a global one. Data were collected through two surveys conducted in the Italian context: the first among 157 Italian merchants that had used Groupon; the second among 106 merchants that sold their coupons through Kauppa, a local daily deals site operating in six Italian provinces. The results show similar levels of overall satisfaction for the two samples. Nonetheless significant differences between Groupons’ and Kauppa’s merchants emerged regarding the drivers of their satisfaction. Hence merchants may decide to use either a global or a local daily deals site, depending on the specific objectives they intend to achieve through couponing.
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
