Case Study: Groupon

In this part I will analyze Groupon's efforts for sustainable growth in the face of global challenges. Then, I will assess the leadership management and its impact on organization's operations. Actually, for any new small company like Groupon to be success and growth quickly for sure it is not an easy work especially in a complex and difficult markets' challenges. Markets are saturated with such companies. In other hand, that doesn't mean they can't growth with such situations. In fact, there are different ways to reach milestones that can catapult any business to success. The main way in my point of view is to utilize the internal resources and capabilities effectively in right strategy as Barney and Grant explained in RBV (Barney 1991). The RBV suggests that the resources possessed by a firm are the primary determinants of its performance and these contribute to a sustainable competitive advantage (Akio 2005). In Groupon case, its growth depend on how understand and exploit its distinctive capabilities and strategic assets. Therefore, the growth depends on how they use the distinctive capabilities in unique way that should be difficult for others to cope or obtain (Turner 2006). Groupon maintain its growth through its capabilities (business and project capabilities) and its strategy assets. It sustain its growth through different aspects like strong collective buying power, rapid expansion and globalization strategy, market share, campaigns, best local team, daily activity and operations,
traditional and digital marketing.
Strong buying power; by using porter's five forces model to analyze Groupon situation we can find that it has a strong collective buying power of the consumers
Rapid expansion and globalization strategy; Groupon has ventured its local market by employing a rapid expansion and globalization strategy by mergers and acquisitions.
For example, in 2011 it had expanded in 500 markets in 42 countries and serving 60 million subscribers (Bhatnagar & Thadamalla 2013) (see
figure1). Figure 1: Groupon Inc. Expansion and Growth 2008 – 2012
Campaigns; Mason observed that the campaigns were able to unite the consumers together with collective buying power (Bhatnagar & Thadamalla 2013).
Best local team;
Groupon had a venture capitalist with the Chicago-based New World Ventures. It has created the most lucrative monetization engine for the internet since Google Search. Also, they have cracked the code on local marketing. They have a lot of headroom for growth ahead of them.
Boston-based Engel & Schultz law firm
Daily activity and operations; it involved sending emails to subscribers daily with discount offering for goods and services by location and consumers' preferences (Bhatnagar & Thadamalla 2013). Also, the implement their own mobile apps so the subscribers easy accesses to the daily deals.