Under the media radar, shopping discounts/coupon sites are growing steadily

MILWAUKEE, May 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Super Bowl viewers saw ads for them. Web surfers regularly see banners for them. And many e-mail users get their messages daily. There's no question - group "daily deals" coupon sites are hot right now. However, many experts have recently begun to question whether the business model of coupon websites like Groupon and Living Social is sustainable. As media outlets from the Wall Street Journal to LA Observed have pointed out, the backlash against these sites is growing, and comes from consumers as well as businesses.  

Most of the stories cite the typical structure of daily deal offers, in which retailers absorb as much as 75 percent of the deal's cost. Other frequently cited negatives include over-redemption and a lack of return customers (for retailers) and difficulties in redeeming coupons before expiration (for consumers.)

However, while the daily deal sites have been getting all the publicity, another more sustainable category of coupon web sites has quietly, steadily been growing. In the last few years, literally hundreds - possibly thousands - of "shopping discounts/coupon" sites have come online.  

These sites differ from the Groupon/Living Social model in a number of ways. For starters, their offers don't depend on group participation. Secondly, purchases on them are made directly with the retailer, not the site. Deals are brought to the site directly from merchants. While sites get a small commission on each sale (typically five percent), retailers keep a much larger portion of the actual cost. Finally, very few of their coupons have expiration dates, in part because they deal primarily with online retailers. SimplyBestCoupons.com, one of the largest, deals exclusively with e-businesses; some 9,000 of them currently offer deals through that site.

Like the group-based "daily deal" sites, the appeal of non-group based coupon sites translates across borders. SimplyBestCoupons.com, for example, has "sister" sites in Canada and England (simplybestcoupons.ca and simplybestcoupons.co.uk) and several other countries. Roughly a third of the company's business is international.  

Contact: Andy Larsen, 414-840-0891/alarsen@boelterlincoln.com

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SOURCE SimplyBestCoupons.com