The future of buying

With Groupon there's a new giant in town!

Groupon exists for 2 years now and has already turned down a take-over bid from google worth over 5 billion dollars. Easy to say, the company has loads of potential and it is not afraid to remain independent!

So what business is Groupon in?

This next video will explain it in a very basic and clear way:

Experts already predicted that the online market for 'local business advertising' will show major growth in the next years. It is not without a reason that both Facebook and Yahoo already have said they are planning to put lots of effort in this market.

Furthermore, Facebook has already launched their 'Buy With Friends' concept. This concept is now aiming on the games in Facebook in particular, but shows the same collective buying concept as Groupon.

Enough about the market, back to Groupon!

Recently Groupon has been negatively in the news with their Superbowl advertisement.

The ad says 'not all hope is lost', aiming at the situation in Tibet:

Groupon received a lot of negative response to this advertisement and immediately took the ad out of the air and offered their apologies.

Will this affect their business?

I don't expect so, everybody makes mistakes, they have offered their apologies and said they were wrong. Besides that, they have been all over the news lately, which without a doubt has positively influenced the brand awareness of Groupon.

My expectation:

Collective buying is the future when it comes to buying from local businesses!

Lost, television series or ...?

The television series Lost, I assume everybody has heard from this television series to a greater or lesser extent. The series is about a group of people who have survived an airplane crash and find theirselfs on a mysterious tropical island.

At this point you might be thinking to yourself what a group of people on a deserted island have to do with my study Business communication and Digital Media.

The people on the island are engaging themselves in relationships through face-to-face interaction with each other. Which brings me to the point I'm trying to make with this:
When we have a look at several theories concerning relationships through social media, we can group these theories into two perspectives, the 'Lost' perspective and the 'Liberated' perspective.

The 'Lost' perspective states that people do not need social, digital media to engage themselves in a solid relationship, but simply use face-to-face interaction to build up friendships. And furthermore, that face-to-face interaction is the most appropriate manner to build up solid friendships.

On the other hand we find the 'Liberated' perspective which states that social, digital media is well appropriate for building up solid relationships between people and adds a positive contribution to the process of building up friendships.
I think it's ironic that a television series called 'Lost' follows people who are limited in their ways to interact with each other and only have the possibility to interact face-to-face with each other. I don't think a lot of people have ever looked at the name of this series in such manner before and I hope I've shown you a new point of view.

The last thing that remains me to ask you is:

Are you 'Lost', or 'Liberated'?

Relevant literature:
Thurlow, C., Lengel, L., & Tomic, A. (2004). Computer Mediated Communication. SAGE Publications Ltd.

Whose fault is it actually?

Company's often blame you, the consumer, for not knowing how common used products work.

But who's fault is it really? Can they blame you for not knowing which buttons to press and in which order just to adjust the time on your VCR or DVD? Or can they blame you for the fact that you are not able to adjust your tv's volume the first time you try?

I think they can't blame you!

Look at this ordinary tv remote control for example and tell me which purpose the arrows in the cirkle have, I bet you can't if you have not used this remote control before.

But not only digital/modern products encounter many usability problems, you can find poorly designed interfaces anywhere you look. Another example of such interface is the following tap and sink. When you look at the objects that are close by to the tap and the sink they could practically all serve as a button to turn on the tape.

The main point I am trying to make with all this, is to show you that you're not stupid, but the designers were when designing these interfaces! A well designed interface takes the human cognitive systems into account and adapts to its target group in such way, this target group is able to use the interface.

So remember, you're not the idiot, they are!