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AmazonLocal

local.amazon.com

52 pointsseregine25 comments

This is a surprisingly raw launch by a company like Amazon, especially considering they have a partnership with living social. You sign up and nothing is available? Even in a fairly large city like Boston? From a launch POV I'm just surprised they didn't wait til they had some inventory and then add it to your customized homepage. e.g. "Since you were looking at cookbooks would you like 50% of 1 $20 gift card at Temple Bar?"

Looks like it's only available in Boise: http://local.amazon.com/boise

Deal sites are all about achieving leads so shouldn't their MVP be a nice website with a way to show your interest by opting in? Amazon's brand will play a huge part in getting sign-ups, especially since they know our shopping habits.

I totally agree, but I expect more from an MVP from a company like Amazon. For instance, that "Munch" YC company at least had a couple deals in the bay area to peruse. Ultimately it is no big deal, I love Amazon, was just surprised there was almost no content to entice a user.

It's unfortunate that "local" has come to mean "groupon clone". There's so much more to local commerce.

If Amazon succeeds with this now then this will be a really good example to disprove the concept of the first mover (or maybe in this case hundredth mover) advantage forever.

Can't say I ever really agreed with the first mover advantage. Looking back, it's usually someone who comes later who really "gets it right", now that they have the perspective that the first guy laid out for them. As a first mover, you've got to be constantly changing to keep up with these newcomers.

If you can't be first, be best. If you can't be best, be first.

I always say "First or best. Pick at least one."

Looks like it's Boise only right now? Interesting place to start.

oh thanks, I thought it was just me.

FWIW, "enter city or zipcode" seems to only accept numbers, I imagine this is US only but I believe there are cities with letters in their names also there :)

It comes up pre-populated with my address, presumably because I'm logged into Amazon. But the design doesn't seem to account for me wanting, say, a coupon for lunch in the city where I work.

So we've got LivingSocial, Groupon, Google Offers, and now AmazonLocal. Am I the only one not seeing the point of these coupon sites?

I suppose Groupon's required email address turned me off to the genre early on.

>Am I the only one not seeing the point of these coupon sites?

http://www.evanmiller.org/golden-football.html

"Groupon provides the mechanism to move businesses and customers over to a part of the diagram previously regarded as unreachable. It only works because customers can collectively commit to buying more than they would with a run-of-the-mill coupon."

But it breaks down when that business fails to increase it's capacity. Case in point: I used groupon once for a restaurant and the experience was horrible. The restaurant was completely unprepared for the number of people showing up. On paper I got $40 bucks worth of food and service for $20 bucks, but the experience was so bad I wish I had stayed home and saved my $20 bucks.

In my situation the restaurant and Groupon dropped the golden football.

I've also seen restaurants offering such deals ask if you're using a GroupOn voucher before presenting you with a menu, the menu you're then given is not the same as the usual menu. Items are more expensive (over-priced I would say), and the selection is narrower.

From a business perspective the failure to convert into repeat business has long known to be a problem, but now having experienced GroupOn as being a second class experience I simply won't be using it again.

In fact, the limited experience of GroupOn in our household has been such that they've successfully made us dubious of the entire offers/group-buying thing and leave us preferring to get personal service and avoiding the offerings of GroupOn and all of their competitors.

Is this with or against livingsocial.com?

Judging by the fact that Boise, ID is their only market right now, and the deals on both sites for Boise are different, I'd say it's independent of livingsocial

It's independent of LivingSocial but is aggregating deals from other companies (at the bottom of the deal it says with which company, in this case it's LS).

I'm guessing it is going to mix it up by offering deals from other services, whilst it builds up momentum to offer its own.

Doesn't make sense though ! I would prefer this concept if they have it on the amazon.com homepage. I would hate to give my mail address. I have a feeling this was done in response to Google Wallet.

After a roaring success bringing mail order catalogs online, and then bringing books themselves online, the followup is... ValuPak online? USA needs more interesting problems to solve.

How utterly shameless! It even looks just like GroupOn... that's... lame... that's all I can say.

One of the knocks on Groupon has always been how easy their product is to clone, and how the competition in the space will inevitably drive margins down.

It's not that easy to clone a user base though which is the leverage of most niche sites. Not saying Amazon can't do it, it is Amazon so anything is possible but it's not a general rule. For example, if I was the one doing a clone of Groupon I would most probably fail since I lack the resources (sales people) to do better than them.

That's true, but then yet another knock on Groupon is that it's not clear they actually have any sort of exclusive access to their userbase. It doesn't really cost a Groupon user anything to also sign up for LivingSocial or AmazonLocal, and a user looking for good deals actually has the incentive to sign up for as many of these services as are available (a good deal can come from anywhere).

There's also the common observation from Groupon advertisers that Groupon users aren't necessarily particularly desirable customers. They're often deal hunters who have no interest in becoming regular customers after they've used their coupon (not that LivingSocial or AmazonLocal users would be any better in this regard).

Edit: also worth pointing out, this is why I think Square's latest offering has the potential to knock it out of the park: user and merchant stickiness, going after loyalty rather than dealhunting, etc.

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