University Business Report: Groupon's Strategic Management Analysis

This report provides a strategic management analysis of Groupon, addressing its competitive advantages, resources, and capabilities. The report begins by examining why Groupon is difficult to imitate, highlighting its large customer base, operational complexity, and advanced technology platform. It then delves into Groupon's strategic capabilities, including its financial, human, marketing, and operational management resources. The report explores whether these valuable resources are rare and expensive to imitate, considering the pressures of industry disruption. Finally, the report concludes with recommendations for a new CEO of Groupon, suggesting enhancements to human resources, marketing strategies, and customer outreach to ensure long-term growth and development. The report references several academic sources to support its claims and analyses.

Running head: STRATEGIC MANAGEMNT
STRATEGIC MANAGEMNT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Question 1
I agree with Andrew Mason, that yet having thousands of copycats, Groupon is difficult to
imitate. This is because of several reasons such as it has a huge base of more than 50 million
loyal customers that cannot be copied (Edelman, Jaffe and Kominers, 2016). The more number
of customers better will be the deals that will prevent them to shift to other competitors.
Moreover, it is difficult to imitate and overlook operational complexity. It is not easy to have
thousands of salespersons in the company to interact with local merchants daily which is not an
easy thing to do. It is not an easy task for the competitors to copy its resources and strategies. It
has an advanced technology platform for better targeting of customers which was built via
acquisitions. The resources of an organization should be rare, valuable and non imitable
otherwise its competitors can easily copy and take over its place in the market. Its values
includes it is a expertise in telesales, human assets and cost per acquisition replica. It tends to
take numerous small decisions and socially compound resources which are difficult to copy. Its
rareness lies in network externalities including offers from Google, Facebook and so on. It
includes hybrid model and dual advertising space and offers great deal and discounts to
customers for attainable luxury which leads to expansion and acquisition of new customers.
Question 2
Capabilities of Groupon are the strategic capabilities that add to its long term survival of the
organization or competitive advantage. Resources include suppliers, partners or stakeholders that
is, what they have. The daily deals and offers of Groupon were appreciated by the customers
who have attracted thousands of copycats across the worldwide and the valuable resources
include financial, human, marketing and operations management. The question arises whether

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the valuable resources of Groupon are rare or expensive to attain. If the resources are not rare
than both the competitors and new entrants can try to copy its resources and replace them in the
market (Victorino 2016). The valuable resources are expensive to imitate that is most of the
industries are facing rising pressures of disruption. However, it seems to appear that the center
separation of Groupon is hard to imitate. Imitation of products of Groupon can only occur in two
ways, replication of the products, and challengers pending up with alternate ideas that disturb the
present manufacturing structure. The organizational skills and capabilities to make the majority
of the resources and it calculate how much Groupon has been capable to bind the valuable, rare
and hard to copy sources in the market place. The utilization level examination for Groupon
products can be completed in two ways. Groupon must have the ability to fully exploit and
utilize its valuable resources to the extent of competitive advantage in the present and in future.
Often the utilization level is extremely needy upon implementation team and completing strategy
of the company. Thus, exploitation stage is a good quality indicator to review the excellence of
human capital in the association. Capabilities are inclined to happen or enlarge over instance as a
firm obtains actions that build on its planned capital.
Question 3
If I were the new CEO of Groupon, I would come up with new competencies and resources that
would serve the organization for long term growth and development in the business across the
world (Karakowsky and Guriel 2015). The human resources should be increased from ten
thousand too many more and across others countries so that the customer base increases and the
relationship between stakeholders and merchants increases to enhance the relationship between
the company and the customers so that they do not switch to others copycats. Marketing and
advertising strategies should be enhanced more via the use of social media platform like

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Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as the young generation are always active on social media and
more interested in discount coupons for movies, spas or restaurants and also they can refer their
family and friends about Groupon and therefore won’t be disappointed by its services
(Rothaermel 2015). It should come up with new alternative ways of reaching out more customers
and everyday new offers and deals that other competitors do not offer like offers from first time
users and that should be free and if they do not like the services they can opt out and if they like
it, they can recommend it to others.

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References
Dang, V.L., 2013. E-commerce strategies of group buying websites: case study: Groupon Inc.
Edelman, B., Jaffe, S. and Kominers, S.D., 2016. To groupon or not to groupon: The profitability
of deep discounts. Marketing Letters, 27(1), pp.39-53.
Karakowsky, L. and Guriel, N., 2015. The context of business: Understanding the Canadian
business environment. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library.
Rodrigues, E.F., Dalcol, P.R.T., Pizzolato, N.D. and Maruyama, Ú., 2013. Virtual organisation
model: the new organisation and value chain framework. International Journal of Environmental
Technology and Management, 16(5-6), pp.437-450.
Rothaermel, F.T., 2015. Strategic management. McGraw-Hill Education.
Victorino, C.F.R., 2016. Startup audacious path: dynamic capabilities and distinctive
competence as source of competitive advantage (Doctoral dissertation).