Case Study - Online Coupon Industry

The online coupon industry has created a buzz in the market. People love to save money on goods and services with coupons. Finding and collecting coupons has become a lot easier with the advent of online computing. Research shows that 48% of U.S. adult Internet users redeemed a digital coupon for shopping in 2012, which is a very high conversion number. It is estimated that 97 million U.S. adults will access coupons via the Internet by the end of 2013, growing to 100 million in 2014. Though the market is very competitive and fragmented, there are no barriers to entry at present. Popular websites, like Google, Facebook, Groupon, and Amazon lead the market. A coupon is a ticket or document that can be exchanged for a financial discount or free items when purchasing a product. Coupons are issued by manufacturers of consumer packaged goods or by retailers, and are used in retail stores as a part of sales promotions. The coupons are often widely distributed through mail, magazines, newspapers, internet, and mobile devices. Online coupons are digital or printable documents. Some popular online coupons are discount coupons that offer discounts or offer buy one get one free deals; referral coupons that offer special discounts to third parties so that they drive more traffic to the retailer’s website; and click-through deals links that lead customers to product deals upon clicking the particular link. Most of the providers promote sites through social media, search engine optimization and PPC marketing. The spending for online promotion is high.

Problems

The success of Groupon.com resulted in the spread for coupon based websites. This has prompted a California based software firm to open a division to promote a portal similar to the concept of Groupon.com. After three rounds of discussions, DART prepared a project plant to perform competitive analysis to guide the company move further.

Methodologies

The market research report prepared by DART included an in-depth market overview section, a list of online coupon providers, a competition analysis of coupons versus other forms of advertisements, key industry trends, and SWOT analysis of the industry. The report contained the latest data depicted through charts and tables to break the monotony of the report and make the reader’s experience more interesting. Tables and charts were prepared depicting expected online coupon distribution during 2009 – 15, online coupon penetration, CPG coupon internet redemption rate, top-10 online coupon sites, total coupon distribution, performance of coupon sites, visitors per month in coupon sites and related metrics.

DART’s Market Research Services

DART has expertise in preparing market research reports, performing competitive analysis and preparing business plan. The customized reports are prepared after extensive data collection from publicly available sources, and then analysis of the same to form a collated research report. Detailed analysis of the market, target customers, and market trends are provided in the report. DART Analysts are experienced in preparing reports with supporting graphs, tables and analysis.