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Date Submitted: 04/01/2014 11:07 PM
Transnational Management: Applied to the Case of Groupon
Maastricht University School of Business and Economics Maastricht, Dec. 4th, 2012
Course: Global Business
Table of contents 1. Introduction 2. Business model 3. Organizational Structure 4. Groupon’s corporate strategy 5. Groupons global strategy 6. Groupon’s entry to China 7. An Evolving Role 8. Conclusion 9. References 10. Appendix
Page 2 3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 13
1. Introduction Groupon is a deal-of-the day Internet start-up company that was launched in 2008 in Chicago. The website offers discounted deals for local as well as national companies. Now operating in more than 150 markets as diverse as the United States, Canada, Taiwan, Brazil, Europe, South America, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, China, Russia and many more. Consequently there is no doubt that this company is a multinational enterprise (MNE). Groupon had 35 million registered users by October 2010 and thus has been one of the fastest growing businesses in the world (Lacrote, 2011). According to Andrew Mason, founder and CEO, Groupon was founded to be the first company to offer the very best deals available. This could only be done by contacting local merchants directly which gave Groupon its competitive advantage. Using this local responsiveness Groupon is able to offer the best deals every day within 24 hours (Cutler, 2010). The aim of this paper is to analyze how successful Groupon’s global strategy can be implemented worldwide. Firstly an overall impression of Groupon’s business model and organizational structure is given. Secondly a deeper insight in the corporate strategy as well as the global strategy is provided. Furthermore the unsuccessful entry to China is analyzed and evaluated. Finally this paper conducts to what extent Groupon can be considered socially responsible before a conclusion is drawn in the last section.
2. The Business Model Groupon is a multinational start-up company that offers one “Groupon”...