Group buying

Recently I got many deals from group buying sites like 50% off $20 Amazon gift card from LivingSocial, $4 AMC movie ticket from mamapedia.com, Los Gatos museum family membership from groupon.com. Also there are many news regarding group buying web sites (which are expected to have huge marketing share from local advertisement, a billion dollar web tread) , including today Google launched Google Offers from iGoogle, after groupon.com denied Google's 6 billion acquisition request, also LivingSocial promoted its web site traffic with Amazon overwhelming gift card offer. The concept (tuangou, team buying, group buying, or group shopping) was originated from China, and There are more than 800 tuangou websites in China.

So what is group buying? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuangou

Here is some excerpt to discuss about group buying characteristics, and also a new model from an e-commerce company called Next Jump.

The most notable characteristic of all those intermediaries is the selected deals' orientation towards local markets, bound to cities and towns. Leaders include Groupon, which has 79% of the market share, LivingSocial (8% share) and BuyWithMe(3% share)^[5]
 
In 2010, several new business models for group buying have been proposed, emerging from the overall popularization of micropayments. After the offer's deadline, buyers make direct purchases from the vendors' web sites, achieving higher mutual benefits. The most prominent company in this area is Next Jump, which handles a line called 'Overwhelming Offers', offered through many loyalty programs, including Borders Rewards, MasterCard Marketplace, and their own website. This method does not charge percentage fees, but uses reservations as pledges of interest for after-deadline purchases.

There is another group buying site which is a deal aggregator from other popular group buying sites. The example is Yipit.

This article http://tomuse.com/group-buying-sites-coupon-deals-discount-savings/ compares many group buying sites from many aspects including countries, cities, referral incentive, reward points, mobile app (on-the-go), unique features, gifts etc.