Posted by
Barry Siskind
Community Manager
It started inNorth Americawith a site called Groupon. Simply the site offered retail merchants an opportunity to offer a product or service at a discount. A notification was sent by e-mail to its opt-in members. Consumers could print out the coupon and redeem it at the store. The results have been amazing with some retailers reporting their inability to keep up with demand.
The group buying sites are popping up quickly and it won’t be long before what began as a local phenomenon has spread globally.
Will the group buying sites ultimately become another tool for the exhibition industry to use to fill exhibit halls with paying attendees?
It seems that most opt-in members, for now, are consumers. But it is inevitable that the group buying sites will turn their attention to the business community and that’s when the exhibition industry can reap the rewards. For now this may be just the beginning of an idea whose influence can spread into all aspect of business. It’s worth our time watching it mature.
Barry, there actually are now about 15 b2b deal sites out there (mostly in the U.S. and mostly focused on small and mid-sized businesses), including our own Bizy™ Deal LLC site, which Lou Friedmann and I launched in April. You can find us at: http://www.bizydeal.com. Of particular note, we are the first and only b2b deal platform owner to also focus on the exhibition industry. For example, Bizy “powered” the National Restaurant Association’s NRA Show Daily Deals program this past May in Chicago. Details here: http://bit.ly/noeruV. More such co-branded exhibition-specific deal programs, some to operate year round, are imminent. Bizy also is launching co-branded, b2b publisher-led deal platforms, including one in the residential construction industry in concert with SCG Horizon’s HousingZone.com. Details here: http://bit.ly/r08psE. We also see an opportunity to work with exhibition industry associations (for example, IAEE or PCMA) to launch deals sites exclusively for their members. So what you have predicted in your blog is already happening, though it’s still early days. Watch for many more announcements to come from Bizy!