Written by, Sandeep Kumar
Updated March, 14, 2023
Groupon is a huge name in the world of discounts and deals.
Groupon is a huge name in the world of discounts and deals. Launched in 2008, it has been in business for a long time.
The company was founded by Andrew Mason, Eric Lefkofsky, and Brad Keywell in Chicago, Illinois, where it’s still headquartered. The first-ever deal was for Motel Bar, located just below the Groupon office in Chicago.
This was the launching pad for what would go on to become the biggest name in e-coupons and later branch out into the world of e-commerce. Let’s look at the trends, acquisition, usage, and other Groupon statistics to learn more about this discount and e-coupon giant.
Below are some Groupon statistics about trends in recent years.
Source: Statista
The Groupon app has seen a steady rise in downloads since 2013:
But the company’s mobile app growth plateaued at around 200 million at the start of 2019.
Source: Statista
Groupon’s sales through mobile devices have always been high, with 50% or more of total revenue from smartphones and tablets since 2014. Mobile accounted for 75% of its total sales in 2019—a significant increase from 2017’s 66%.
Source: Statista
The number of unique global visitors to Groupon’s website, from mobile and desktop devices combined, was 52.7 million in December 2019. This figure has been decreasing every month until it hit a low of 27.1 million in April 2020 due to lockdowns and the global pandemic.
But after that slump, Groupon saw a steady rise in monthly visits and reached 32.8 million in August 2020. In September of the same year, visits once again declined to 27.8 million.
Groupon has been in business for over a decade, during which it saw tremendous growth. Although its sales have been shrinking since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it made over 40 acquisitions throughout the years.
Here are some Groupon statistics about these acquisitions organized by year.
2010
Source: TechCrunch
Groupon’s first acquisition was of Mob.ly, a mobile development firm. Together, they opened their first office in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley.
Source: TechCrunch
The German startup CityDeal was a booming deal service operating in 80 European countries and had 1 million subscribers compared to Groupon’s 5 million in 2010. Groupon acquired the company with the intent of rebranding.
In June, the American company went on a roll and acquired South American Clan Descuento in June, Japanese Qpod in August, and Singaporean Beeconomic and Russian Darberry in November.
2011
Source: WebProNews
Groupon acquired three more counterparts from Malaysia, India, and Hong Kong in 2011. It also acquired Obtiva, a Ruby on Rails software development firm from Groupon’s hometown, Chicago.
2012
Source: PitchBook
Groupon had been on the lookout for market competitors. It bought Savored, restaurant reservations and discounts startup, after acquiring Ditto and Breadcrumb. Breadcrumb and Savored gave Groupon unparalleled access to deals in the food and restaurant industry.
2013
The company continues the streak of acquisitions with expansions in the spheres of location services and local commerce.
2014
Source: Forbes
This was the most significant acquisition in Groupon’s history up to then. It bought Ideeli, a “flash fashion” website, at a considerable discount, given that it received $107 million in venture capital from 2007 to 2013.
2016
Source: CNN Business
Groupon managed to acquire its rival and direct competitor, LivingSocial, at a significant discount. At the time, both companies were seeing declines in users, owing to daily deal fatigue, among other reasons. Groupon leaped at the opportunity to buy its rival and significantly increased its US market share.
2018
Source: TechCrunch
Bristol, a UK-based cloud savings company and owner of Vouchercloud and Giftcloud, was bought by Groupon for $65 million to amplify its existing direct offers.
2019
Source: BusinessWire
Presence AI is an AI-powered text and voice communications tool, which Groupon acquired in 2019 to improve its booking experience with users.
There are Groupon users all across the world, but the majority of customers come from the US. Let’s look at some Groupon statistics to get a better idea of the company’s usage.
Source: Statista
Active Groupon customers amounted to 34.2 million by Q3 of 2020. These were all Groupon users who had bought at least one deal in the last year.
Source: Groupon Investors
According to the Groupon Investors page, the company has over 6,000 employees, currently working across all offices in around 15 countries.
Source: SaaS Scout, Statista, BusinessWire
When it comes to the number of coupons provided to customers, Groupon beats every competitor on the market.
Groupon customers have redeemed over 1 billion coupons to date. Additionally, Groupon statistics show that it sold over 100 million deals in Q4 of 2014 alone.
Source: ReadyCloud
According to ReadyCloud research, Groupon had over 7 million business pages hosted on its server in 2016. This number grew in the following years but fell after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Source: TheStreet
As of 2019, Groupon services citizens of over 20 countries with its deals and coupons. Active Groupon users are present in countries in Europe, North and South America, and Asia.
In its initial years, Groupon’s competitors included the likes of LivingSocial and GILT. After acquiring LivingSocial, the Groupon market share grew substantially, and it turned into an e-commerce company that now competes with bigger names. Today, Groupon’s competitors include e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Walmart.
Source: macrotrends
Groupon hasn’t seen such a low revenue since 2010 when it was just starting to boom and recorded annual revenue of $313 million. Groupon statistics show that from 2012 onwards, it consistently made over $2 billion and peaked in 2014 with more than $3 billion in annual revenue.
Source: macrotrends
Compared to the top player in the e-commerce market, Amazon, Groupon is nowhere near as valuable. This Groupon competitor is one of the world’s largest companies, with over twice as big a market cap as the next company in the field, Alibaba.
Source: SaaS Scout, Statista
These statistics show that the Groupon competitor, Walmart, has more than 10 times the monthly visitors of Groupon.
The retail and e-commerce giant also has more employees at a whopping 2.2 million, compared to under 10,000 at Groupon. That’s hardly a surprise since Walmart is the biggest retail chain in the world by revenue.
Despite entering the e-commerce market, Groupon is primarily a platform for deals. Here are some Groupon statistics on its coupons and discounts.
Source: Investopedia
Groupon offers a wide range of discounts on its website, and users can avail of up to 90% off on some deals. The average discount available from a coupon is between 15% to 30%.
Source: ReadyCloud
Groupon provides so many deals to its customers worldwide that over 547,000 coupons are redeemed by users daily.
This means that about 22,000 coupons are redeemed every hour, 366 every minute, and 6 every second.
Source: macrotrends
The TTM gross profit of Groupon was $680 million in the last quarter of 2020. It has been on a steady decline since March 2018, when it reached $1.35 billion.
Over the years, Groupon has taken its number of users to new heights by attracting more customers and expanding into different markets. This has not been the case since the pandemic hit, but the company still has a fair number of users on its platform.
Source: SaaS Scout
Groupon statistics reveal that it attracts a large number of women, thanks to the many discounts and deals offered on women’s products and services.
Source: SaaS Scout
Groupon is more attractive to younger customers. Moreover, the company offers more deals on products and services targeted to a younger demographic. This results in 68% of its total user base falling between the ages of 18 and 34.
Groupon has spent immense amounts of money to market itself to the world. One extreme example was from 2010, when it spent over 90% of its revenue ($290 million) on marketing. This was the year of its initial boom, so it made sense.
Source: SaaS Scout
Groupon increased its marketing expenditure to $768.5 million in 2011, which was 47% of its revenue. The following year, it decreased this amount and spent only 14%, or $336.9 million. In the year after that, 2013, expenditure further decreased to 8.3% of revenue, or $214.8 million.
Source: SaaS Scout
This sum was invested in TV commercials and online marketing and amounted to around 30% of its gross profits that year.
Groupon makes most of its revenue through deals and a smaller part from the various companies it has acquired over the years. Here are some Groupon statistics on revenue.
Source: Investopedia
When a vendor decides to work with Groupon to increase its marketing and sales, Groupon will typically take 50% of the vendor’s sales as a service fee. If, for example, a barber sells haircuts at $40 and discounts them on Groupon for $20, he only keeps $10 per customer and pays $10 to Groupon.
Source: Statista
In Q3 2020, Groupon generated around $343 million in gross billings through local deals, and the total gross billings across all segments added up to approximately $597 billion. These segments include goods, travel, and local.
Groupon is one of the fastest-growing businesses of the last decade. Although it’s not doing so well during these tough times, our collection of Groupon statistics tells us the company knows how to bounce back. After all, it has a brand name that’s known around the world.