AT&T Shifts into Genghis Kahn Mode

June 13, 2011

I remember learning about warriors riding horses 24 hours a day. Instead of hitting the Mongolian equivalent of a convenience store, the rider open a vein on his horse’s neck and took a swig. Efficient.

Now AT&T wants to break in to the online coupon market according to Bloomberg’s article ” AT&T Takes on Groupon with $10 Promotion for Daily Deal Site.”

The new-old Ma Bell has revealed her plans to open a “Grouponesque” type of Web site for consumers through YellowPages.com.

Daily deals are the latest consumer shopping trend and have taken off in the wake of the slowing economy. Why pay full price when you can pay one half or one third of the full price?

AT&T will have to compete with veterans like Groupon, Facebook, and the such newspapers as the New York Times. AT&T believes it can be competitive by using larger discounts and making their site more amenable to the mobile deal hunter.

Pundits and assorted consulting firms anticipate that sales at restaurants, clothing stores and hair and nail salons will reach $6.1 billion by 2015 making the internet discount business potentially, extremely lucrative. The article said:

Market leader Groupon, based in Chicago, is planning an initial public offering later this year that would value the company at between $15 billion and $25 billion, two people familiar with the plans said last month.

I’m not entirely sure what my colleagues believe, but if ATT can truly capitalize on its “no search” couponing idea, may have an edge on their competitors. Could AT&T have a consumer market winner? With more than 90 million users AT&T is going to have a running start in this hot new segment.

Leslie Radcliff, June 13, 2011

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, the resource for enterprise search information and current news about data fusion

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