U.S global e-commerce marketplace Groupon has announced that they will no longer be selling goods as it wants to focus its efforts on the local experiences market opportunity. Groupon’s transformation follows their disappointing fourth quarter where they missed their sales target by 86 million euros. Analysts expected the company to make 653 million euros, but instead, they made 567 million euros. Groupon’s transformation will allow the company to focus on services and also to achieve a broader inventory, modernized products and provide new ways for merchants to partner with them.
J&P comments
The local experience market is estimated to be worth 930 million euros and migrates quickly from offline to online. Groupon’s decision to stop selling goods should be considered a strategic move rather than failure since they identified that business was declining at an early stage, which then led them to take a different route.
