Article: A Groupon Alternative Aims to Offer Small Businesses a Better Deal
Source: New York Times
Constant Contact, an online business that has been around for over 14 years and specializes in serving small businesses, has recently released a new product called SaveLocal. SaveLocal is kind of a playoff of the popular website Groupon on which people buy coupon for group discount rates. During an interview with the chief executive of Constant Contact, the new service of SaveLocal was described as coupon-based deal marketing. This coupon based deal marketing was said to be very beneficial to the economy because it promoted consumerism, but also let the businesses control the price of their coupons to ensure that they were not losing money off of it. Also during this interview, it was made clear that Constant Contact had interviewed people about their experiences with Groupon in order to use their feedback and criticism to make SaveLocal the better version of Groupon. This way, SaveLocal would be able to compete with Groupon in the market. As we learned in class, competition is good for the consumers because it allows for lower prices due to the companies attempt to make their products better and more affordable. Also, competition between businesses ensures that there are no monopolies, when one business is in charge of everything in has a particular service.
As I said during my presentation, competition between businesses is good for the CONSUMERS because it allows for lower prices due to the companies attempt to make their products better and more affordable. Do you think that competition between businesses is good for the ECONOMY as well as the consumer? Why or why not?
I think that competition between businesses is good for both the consumer and the economy. Competition is good for the businesses because it keeps them current, a point of interest. New products, new services, new deals. This what attracts their customers. Competition between businesses is good for consumers because it allows them to "shop around" for products and services. It also allows them to find the best price for that product or service. Competition is good for the economy because it prevents a business from having a monopoly on one product or service. It allows room for revenue for the business and money to be put back into the economy.Overall, I think competition is good for everyone; the busuiness, the consumers, and the economy.
ReplyDeleteI think that competition between businesses is bad for the economy because the ways to create the lower prices are dropping the wages for its workers or taking cuts on how much profit they are making. Both of these do not really help the company or the workers but they do help the consumers because they are able to pay lower prices for their products.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Laura, that competition is good for both the economy and consumer. It is important for the consumer because when there is competition, there is no monopoly. Without a monopoly, businesses are able to keep the prices of their products lower so consumers are able to afford them. If there is competition within businesses, they are fighting for consumers, the best way to get customers is to have lower prices. I think competition is good for the economy because it keeps everything going. If there were no competition, the American economy wouldn't be strong because that is what we are built off of. Competition causes prices to be lower which causes the economy to go up.
ReplyDeleteI can see both sides to this argument. As Laura and Kayla said, competition is good for the economy and business because it helps them come out with new ideas, deals, and services for consumers. Competition also helps to keep prices low, so that the consumers are able to afford the items. But, what Alex mentioned is also a downside to competition. With lower prices, it becomes harder for the employees to make more money, and their wages are being cut. If I had to choose a side, I would say that competition is good for the economy and businesses because the ultimate goal of businesses is to make money, and with competition between businesses that would really help to keep customers coming.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Laura and Kayla when they say that competition in business is good for the economy and for the consumer. I think that having competition in business drives those businesses to try and strive to be more efficient and cheaper than all the other companies. This really helps the consumers because they get a better experience out of dealing with businesses or corporations. The way I choose to see it is that I relate it to see it like the theory of evolution. If a species isn't "good" enough, then they die out. If a business isn't good enough or cannot do business as effectively as others, they too die out and close. Competition makes them have to keep up, and if even if a business does close, the consumer still gets to do business with the better and more efficient business. I think that even though this causes businesses to sell things at a lower cost, it still helps the economy. The point of selling things for less is that they sell more of those things, so if they sell enough, they can pay their workers the same wages. This is why I disagree with Alex, but I understand that it could cause the company to make less money if the item/service does not sell well. Overall, I think that competition is good in our capitalist system and it helps to lower prices and make better businesses.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Sydney on this subject because everyone above has made very valid points. After reading all of the posts, it is apparent to me that competition is great for the consumer because it allows for lower prizes. These lower prizes allow consumers to purchase more which could bring up the economy, but what I couldn’t help thinking was that low prices and competition between companies may produce lower wages for laborers. When we had the discussions in class a couple days ago, I know that my group had very in depth conversations on how our economy and businesses may affect laborers and the small wages that they may be making. I believe that this may be a huge down fall to the competition of businesses as well as the economy.
ReplyDeleteI agree with my classmates who said that competition is good. If there is one thing I learned in business management, it is that competition is generally a good thing. With our free enterprise economic-political system, competition benefits our society. It makes businesses have to improve their products' quality and to operate efficiently if they want to keep prices down and attract consumers from their rivals. Competition also helps our country by making businesses use our scarce productive resources efficiently. When these businesses use our resources efficiently, customers won't have to buy from competing firms in foreign countries that have lower prices because they are efficient. So competition is very beneficial for our economy. Also, competition is increasingly becoming more in the form of non-price competition nowadays. They do this by making better quality products or by adding features to their products that other sellers don't have. This way companies can attract customers without affecting the price. Competition is what drives our economy. If we didn't have it, then one company would be in a monopoly and would be able to control the prices. Prices for goods would be much higher because that company would have nothing competing against it. So because the U.S. has a capitalistic economic-political system, competition is good for both the economy and the consumers.
ReplyDeleteI think the competition is good as a few other have already said. It keeps prices down for consumers and it also keeps money flowing in the economy. If there wasn't competition then one company could charge outrageous prices which wouldn't be good for the consumer because it cost more money but it would also be bad for the economy because less people would be able to afford the product and less people would by the product. To have a successful economy there must be money flowing through otherwise businesses wouldn't make a profit and wouldn't be able to pay employees then no one would have money, so competition is vital to businesses, consumers and the economy.
ReplyDeleteYes, competition is good for the economy as well as the consumer. As many people before me have stated, competition between businesses forces the businesses to have better quality products, prices and amount of products. Competition between businesses also forces companies to think of the future and be two steps ahead for what the next inventions and new and improves technology will be. All of this said, competition helps the economy too. If competition drives companies to be more cost efficient and lower their prices, then it will eventually higher their profits. This leads to, as Laura first stated, for money to be put back in the economy. If the competition between businesses is always high, then the end result will be more money for those businesses and companies. As a result, the U.S economy is boosted.
ReplyDeleteTo repeat what everyone elses post is that the compition is very important to the economy being at its best. If the compition is low then their becomes monopolies which can dictate prices and their is nothing the consumer can do about it. People would be forced to pay the product it's highest price. The economy would be worse with more monoplies it would lead to job shortages.
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