Sydney Deals

SMEs to egg on Sydney deals
Sydney-based small and medium sized merchants are gravitating towards group buying sites to hold close the un-served customers who are potential bargain hunters and have yet to catch the Sydney deals.
That is a buzzword that was not only doing round in the Melbourne360 conference in June in the Australian largest city, but is also reflecting in the flourishing local daily deals along the southeast coast of the Tasman Sea as well as perhaps in entire Land of Plenty.
No doubt, national deals constitute over 80 per cent of group buying offers, local deals are rapidly clawing share and registered growth from 13 per cent in first quarter to 17 per cent in April-June, according to a research firm Telsyte.
Back to the SME, a top official of a daily deal company said at the conference that roadside merchants and companies with small customer base are capitalizing on the social commerce to push up their sale figures.
Despite that it is a positive development on the face of it for Aussies yearning for affordable holiday package to sandstone rock Uluru, hot balloon ride, or tenpin bowling games, industry analysts lament rowdy elements are playing havocs with the group buying industry and befooling novice discount seekers by their despicable bait and switch ploys.
Seemingly worried over rising numbers of complaints related to fake vouchers and customers bewailing absence of stocks at point of sale, Billy Tucker, CEO Cudo, criticized the unfair practice in the daily deals space. He called for the code of conducts to control such practices.
“A voluntary code was vital to give customers and merchants confidence, and to weed out cowboys,” he spoke categorically at Mumbrella Media and Marketing Conference. Draft code of conduct to regulate the discount market was also presented at the group buying session and notably backed by the Australian Direct Marketing Association.
Advocates of local daily deals consider entry of SMEs as light at the end of tunnel occupied by small numbers of couponing sites. Just as other market such as USA is dominated by fortunate two or three daily deal companies, so out of 50 group buying sites alone eight including Scoopon, Cudo, Living Social, Spreets, Groupon, OurDeal, Deals.com.au, and Ouffer rule the roost in Australia accounting for 90 per cent of daily deals revenue.
Diversity leads to high numbers of choices to customers especially promotes local deals that are necessary to throw blessings of discounts at the grass root level, they argue. Aussies deserve it; after all they are supporting the industry to reach the mark of 400 to 500 million dollars soon.