Like Fast Track, The Signature Lounge has also used "group-buying" websites to help boost sales.
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Most expect the second-tier video sites and group-buying sites to go out of business.
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At least 30 group-buying sites will survive, and they will range from mass market offerings, to niche players.
Group-buying is not a natural monopoly, yet there is a limit to how many group-buying websites consumers will use.
Group-buying is unique from most traditional forms of offline and even online advertising and promotion.
In addition, transaction-only group-buying sites will have a much higher user acquisition cost compared to content publishers with built-in audiences.
Instead, these companies will likely acquire or partner with one of the hand full of existing group-buying sites or platforms.
The company has moved into the GroupOn clone territory, too, with its own group-buying e-commerce web site Nuomi, which rolled out in June 2010.
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We are in the early stages of group-buying, yet it is now entering the hyper-growth phase, which is why speed to user acquisition is paramount.
Gaopeng also faces tough competition from Lashou.com and other group-buying sites.
Even before people in the West knew such a thing as group-buying, Chinese consumers had showed up at some car dealers in groups to demand deep discounts.
Group-buying has moved from a nice-to-have to a must-have marketing strategy for virtually all online businesses, and with the recent activity seen in the past few days the pace will only become more rapid.
When a bellman in a Shanghai hotel advised me to get a breakfast coupon from Lashou.com, a Chinese group-buying site, for less than half the price, I knew that social commerce had gotten into the hearts and minds of Chinese consumers.
Although there are hundreds of group-buying sites in existence, there are only a half a dozen that have a turn-key solution: a known presence in top markets, editorial infrastructure, a credible and local sales force and a sophisticated technology platform that can scale.
Many marketers, Walmart included, are turning to social media group-based buying offers as a way to gain more brand advocates.
In contrasting these sites with Groupon, we can learn a thing or two from the group buying heavy-weight.
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Skype is buying the group-messaging service GroupMe , just a year after it was founded by Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci.
Meanwhile, Thomas Caldwell , a member of Thain's for-profit study group, was engaged in a very public seat-buying binge he'd begun in early 2004.
The number of people who drink coffee at home is at its lowest point in 20 years, according to consumer-market research firm NPD Group, while the number buying it out is at a 20-year high.
The list of heavy-weight retailers launching group buying is growing and growing.
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"If you've got a concept that could be mounted very quickly, then the networks may have to listen more intently than they might otherwise have, " says Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming with Katz Television Group, a New York-based media buying and consulting firm.
His original suit claimed TAP had paid doctors 2% kickbacks, but only one customer got the fees and they were legit: Tri-State Urology, a buying group, had a legal safe harbor to receive the fees.
Rouse, which is buying seven of the malls, will become America's second-largest mall owner (Simon DeBartolo Group is the biggest) and Westfield, which is buying 13, will become the third-largest.
The return to tradition came as no surprise to Bill Carroll, vice president and director of programming at media-buying and consulting firm Katz Television Group.
Likewise, for the time being, any increasing revenue seen by using group buying or local commerce websites is also excluded - even when the payment is actually made through the Internet.
BBC: Mall v internet: Can ecommerce conquer the Middle East?
"It is, in essence, a subsidy from all taxpayers to a smaller group of taxpayers - those that are currently in the process of buying their own home, " he said.
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Now, there is even more anger in Germany over French attempts to stop Siemens, the German industrial giant, buying parts of Alstom, the near-bankrupt French engineering group.
Rather than just buying unconnected postage-stamp-size plots of land, McCormick's group is acquiring entire ecosystems, making concessions to development along the way.
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