Electronic commerce goes against the situation of the country. While the numbers are in red for most economic variables, including consumption and retail, e-commerce shows favorable numbers.
Between January and June, almost 35 million purchases were made online, which represents an advance of 59% compared to the same period of 2017. And the turnover was close to $ 100 million, that is, 66% higher compared to the first half of the year. last year.
The growth takes several years and from the Argentine Chamber of Electronic Commerce (CACE) explain that these numbers are due to the variety of pricing options.
Is that the discounts abound: there are supermarkets that offer coupons or own cards and brands that promote rebates through several banks.
There are also companies that add to specific days of liquidations, such as Black Friday, CyberMonday and Hotsale. There are even companies that use Big Data to know what the consumer prefers and, based on that, to show them advertisements of products with attractive amounts.
This boom is not observed in all actors of electronic commerce. This is the case of coupons, which went from being one of the most promising businesses to an irrelevant option within e-commerce.The reasons for the decline
For Ignacio Carballo, specialist in digital finance, the portion of the coupons "fell drastically" with respect to the rest of the e-commerce.
According to the professor and researcher from the UBA and the UCA, there was an oversupply in quantity provided by this business scheme.
"As in any bubble, when it explodes only some of the most important ones remain, although that does not imply that they persist in a booming way," he adds.
To have a dimension of the phenomenon, in 2011 there were more than 80 companies selling online coupons in Argentina. Today there are a few signatures, such as Groupon, Clickon, Agrupate or Coupon. There is also Discountcity, which groups all the other coupons. In the case of Pez Urbano (which he had bought from Groupalia) it was acquired by Agrupate six years ago.It is estimated that the sector invoices close to $ 100 million, a third of the income of the "golden age". Moreover, if one considers the evolution of inflation, the decline in real terms is even greater.
Carballo mentions another issue that played against the coupons: the changes in the logic of electronic consumption, such as the use of cell phones over the computer, were not accompanied by an adjustment of the business model.
"They continued with the mailing campaigns or strategies on how to position themselves better in Google", explains the expert to iProUP.
He adds: "As the coupons did not innovate, the massive growth of electronic commerce made them become another alternative."
When talking about innovations in the sector, the specialists mention the retails companies that added their own coupons, marketplaces that began to offer financial services or companies that reached consumers after discovering their tastes with the use of Big Data. That is, analyze the data that users produce while browsing the Internet.
"When the market shrunk, the coupon books merged to become non-competitive subsistence oligopolies," he stresses.
Damián Di Pace, economic analyst and business consultant, contributes his vision of why the business was losing the participation of companies.
"When the novelty came, back in 2010, the big companies were tempted to participate," the economist explains to iProUP."But then they noticed that in the sale of goods they went to a loss, they had to offer very high discounts and pay a commission to the coupons, in a market where the profit margins are very rigid, so the profitability associated with producing that good it was null or even negative, "he explained.
To a large extent, this explains why the most commercialized categories with online coupons are services, such as tourism, gastronomy, entertainment or beauty.
"It's better to sell a hotel night at 50% and discount the profit than having it empty," adds Di Pace. The same happens with an armchair in a movie theater or the passage of an airplane.
The number of companies in the sector forced the businesses to offer more and more discounts to achieve a differentiation. This resulted in two phenomena:
1) That companies do not agree to join daily, because of the high production costs of the goods. Therefore, instead of participating daily discounts, they preferred the appearance during specific days of the year, such as CyberMonday, Black Friday and Hotsale. "They did not have to be daily knowing they had three events per year and they could organize to make liquidations or exhaust stocks," explains Di Pace.
2) With the emergence of social networks, companies no longer needed to have a coupon platform to reach consumers.Thus, they started using Facebook or Twitter to publicize their offers. And they used a battery of strategies, such as agreements with credit cards or cobranding in physical retails, among other actions.Brief history coupon book
The business gained more vigor in 2009, and by 2010 it accelerated its worldwide deployment.
In fact, Forbes magazine published in August of that year that Groupon was the company that had had the fastest growth in Internet history: with less than two years of operation, it was worth more than $ 1 billion. At present, its market valuation did not advance too much: u $ s1.800 million.
According to the reports of the Argentine Chamber of Commerce (CACE), in 2011 and 2012 discount companies had a "spectacular growth" and explained the impulse to e-commerce.
In 2013, one out of every three products that were purchased online was through coupons. The change arrived in 2014.On the one hand, the report shows that 55% of online purchases were made in this way. On the other, he anticipated: "The main drivers for the future development of e-commerce will be social networks and events such as CyberMonday, blackfriday and Hot Sale".
A year later, in 2015, seven of every 10 sales were made through a marketplace and retail, so both types of pages increased their presence significantly.
Interestingly, from 2016 onwards, there is no reference to the coupon book companies in the CACE reports.
When asked about iProUP, they state: "We do not have data or specific analyzes about discount companies, we do not discriminate studies based on coupons."
And they added: "The most anticipated events by consumers and brands today are dates like the Hot Sale and the CyberMonday." These days do record the figures of visibility, traffic and reach.Reinvent yourself to survive
If a consumer searches on Google for "online discounts", the first results will be the brand pages, then the HotSale and CyberMonday style websites and finely the digital coupon portals. Only when writing "online coupons" do these pages appear.However, there are also brand websites, especially supermarkets and large retailers, which offer their own coupons for discounts.
In any coupon book, goods and services of all kinds are offered. But the pages highlight the discounts related to travel, entertainment, outings, gastronomy and beauty, with phrases like "experiences for you".
In dialogue with iProUP, the Groupon sales director, Ilson Bressan, indicates that the company has a constant growth, but that they are in a stage of deep modifications.
Of the discounts offered this year, 72% were for experiences and hotels and 28% for products.
"The business changed, we are modifying our platform to be a marketplace of services," he explained.
Before, the logic was to have some big sales for a few days. Now, publications are left for months, with a lower benefit for the consumer, but with a lower rate for the company that offers their goods or services on their platforms.
"With the commission and the current discount, our partners get a profit on coupons, it's a sales channel, not just a marketing tool," he adds.
As part of the innovation, Groupon plans to launch a new website to improve the user experience.In addition, the mobile application will add a geolocation system so that consumers can find the offers they have around them.
Also, it will look for the use of the coupon to stop being necessary and that the users can use it at the moment of the purchase.
"We will rely on Big Data to offer much more personalized content aligned with their preferences and interests," Bressan reported.
But the most radical change will be in name. The operation of Groupon Latin America was acquired in 2017 by the investment fund Mountain Nazca, a group that in the same year made the operations of Peixe Urbano, the largest platform of offers in Brazil. Currently both companies merged their operations.
According to Groupon from iProUP, in the coming months Groupon will begin the process of changing the brand to Peixe, "as part of having the same brand for all Latin American operations."