Why LivingSocial's Business Model is so successful?

LivingSocial, Inc. operates an online local marketplace to buy and share things to do. The company deals in various categories, such as restaurants, events and activities, sports and fitness, health and beauty, and services; travel; shop, including beauty, fashion, gadgets, home, jewelry, learning, wellness, and coupons; gifts for housewarming, congratulations, thank you, birthday, wedding, and anniversary; and coupons. It serves various businesses, such as local merchants, national brands, merchant centers, and affiliates. LivingSocial, Inc. was formerly known as Hungry Machine Inc.

Social impact:

Life changing: affiliation/belonging

Emotional: rewards me, wellness, attractiveness

Functional: reduces cost, makes money, integrates, simplifies, organizes

Acquiring non customers:

Acquiring non customers who traditionally did not seem to be the target of customer value proposition. Customer acquisition refers to gaining new consumers. Acquiring new customers involves persuading consumers to purchase a company’s products and/or services. Companies and organizations consider the cost of customer acquisition as an important measure in evaluating how much value customers bring to their businesses.

Advertising:

This approach generated money by sending promotional marketing messages from other businesses to customers. When you establish a for-profit company, one of the most critical aspects of your strategy is determining how to generate income. Many companies sell either products or services or a mix of the two. However, advertisers are frequently the source of the majority of all of the revenue for online businesses and media organizations. This is referred to as an ad-based income model.

Affiliation:

Commissions are used in the affiliate revenue model example. Essentially, you resell goods from other merchants or businesses on your website or in your physical store. You are then compensated for referring new consumers to the company offering the goods or services. Affiliates often use a pay-per-sale or pay-per-display model. As a result, the business can access a more diversified prospective client base without extra active sales or marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing is a popular internet business strategy with significant potential for growth. When a client purchases via a referral link, the affiliate gets a portion of the transaction's cost.

Brokerage:

A brokerage firm's primary responsibility is to serve as a middleman, connecting buyers and sellers to complete transactions. Accordingly, brokerage firms are compensated through commission once a transaction is completed. For example, when a stock trade order is executed, a transaction fee is paid by an investor to repay the brokerage firm for its efforts in completing the transaction.

Customer loyalty:

Customer loyalty is a very successful business strategy. It entails giving consumers value that extends beyond the product or service itself. It is often provided through incentive-based programs such as member discounts, coupons, birthday discounts, and points. Today, most businesses have some kind of incentive-based programs, such as American Airlines, which rewards customers with points for each trip they take with them.

Discount club:

The discount club concept is built on perpetual high-discount deals utilized as a continual marketing plan or a brief period (usually one day). This might be seen as a reduction in the face value of an invoice prepared in advance of its payments in the medium or long term.

eCommerce:

Electronic commerce, or e-commerce (alternatively spelled eCommerce), is a business model, or a subset of a larger business model, that allows a company or person to do business via an electronic network, usually the internet. As a result, customers gain from increased accessibility and convenience, while the business benefits from integrating sales and distribution with other internal operations. Electronic commerce is prevalent throughout all four main market segments: business to business, business to consumer, consumer to consumer, and consumer to business. Ecommerce may be used to sell almost any goods or service, from books and music to financial services and airline tickets.

Experience:

Disrupts by offering a better understanding that customers are willing to pay for. Experience companies that have progressed may begin charging for the value of the transformation that an experience provides. An experienced company charges for the feelings consumers get as a result of their interaction with it.

Group buying:

Group purchasing, also referred to as collective buying, provides goods and services at substantially discounted rates in exchange for a minimum number of customers. Typically, these websites offer a discount of the day, which becomes active after a certain amount of individuals agree to purchase the goods or service. In addition, numerous group purchasing sites operate by arranging discounts with local businesses and increasing foot traffic in return for lower pricing.

Online marketplace:

An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a kind of e-commerce website in which product or service information is supplied by various third parties or, in some instances, the brand itself, while the marketplace operator handles transactions. Additionally, this pattern encompasses peer-to-peer (P2P) e-commerce between businesses or people. By and large, since marketplaces aggregate goods from a diverse range of suppliers, the variety and availability are typically greater than in vendor-specific online retail shops. Additionally, pricing might be more competitive.

Referral:

Referral marketing is a technique for acquiring new consumers by advertising goods or services through recommendations or ordinary word of mouth. While these recommendations often occur spontaneously, companies may influence this via the use of suitable tactics. Referral marketing is a technique for increasing referrals through word of mouth, arguably the oldest and most trusted kind of marketing. This may be done by incentivizing and rewarding consumers. A diverse range of other contacts to suggest goods and services from consumer and business-to-business companies, both online and offline.

Self-service:

A retail business model in which consumers self-serve the goods they want to buy. Self-service business concepts include self-service food buffets, self-service petrol stations, and self-service markets. Self-service is available through phone, online, and email to automate customer support interactions. Self-service Software and self-service applications (for example, online banking apps, shopping portals, and self-service check-in at airports) are becoming more prevalent.

Transaction facilitator:

The business acts as an acquirer, processing payments on behalf of online merchants, auction sites, and other commercial users for a fee. This encompasses all elements of purchasing, selling, and exchanging currencies at current or predetermined exchange rates. By far the biggest market in the world in terms of trade volume. The largest multinational banks are the leading players in this industry. Around the globe, financial hubs serve as anchors for trade between a diverse range of various kinds of buyers and sellers 24 hours a day, save on weekends.

Two-sided market:

Two-sided marketplaces, also called two-sided networks, are commercial platforms featuring two different user groups that mutually profit from the web. A multi-sided platform is an organization that generates value mainly via the facilitation of direct contacts between two (or more) distinct kinds of connected consumers (MSP). A two-sided market enables interactions between many interdependent consumer groups. The platform's value grows as more groups or individual members of each group use it. For example, eBay is a marketplace that links buyers and sellers. Google connects advertising and searchers. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook are also bidirectional, linking consumers and marketers.