Nasty Strategies of Some of the Top Group Buying Sites in the Philippines Revealed

Group buying sites, like any other online advertising sites, employ their own marketing strategies in order to effectively promote their group deals to a wider audiences. Among these strategies include Google AdWords, Yahoo ads, Facebook ads, on-site promotions, referral bonus, rebates, mailing list, SMS broadcast, paid radio and television features and God  knows how many other strategies and gimmicks you could imagine. Amidst all these marketing eclats some top group buying sites in the Philippines push their effort even further by employing some strategies considered by some a bit out of the usual in order to maintain their edge over their competitors. Some group buying people consider these "unusual" strategies unfair. Others call it misleading. Few branded it illegal (I'm speaking in behalf of some people.)

This article about "nastiness" of some top group buying sites in the Philippines attempts to compile some of these controversies in the Philippines group buying scene today. Please be reminded that this does not reflect the personal opinion of the author in a direct way, but rather, attempts to present to the readers what people are talking about out there regarding the subject at hand.


Metrodeal
One of the most interesting (and rather brilliant) marketing strategies ever employed by a group buying site in the Philippines is Metrodeal's controversial purchase of the Group Page "Buti Pa Ang Biglaang Lakad Natutuloy; Ang Planado Hindi!" The Facebook Page was supposed to be purchased from a group of people selling Facebook Pages to businesses wanting to have a Fanbase instantly without any effort of setting up and inviting people to join in. The strategy worked so well that in fact, the purchase placed Metrodeal head to head even with Groupon and other already established group buying sites almost overnight. This shook the foundation of said huge group buying sites that the rumor (or fact?) quickly spread like wildfire throughout the web particularly on blogs all over the net. Although Metrodeal gained much in terms of sales, much negative feedback were directed to the company(?) that it forced them to finally reveal its true identity to members of "Buti Pa Ang Biglaang Lakad..." and finally renaming the group's title to "Metrodeal Philippines" last mid-June of this year (2011).

While the fake fanpage controversy is slowly subsiding another issue emerged. This time it's about Metrodeal using trade names and deal titles of other sites. Again, mid-June is the date and group buyers started seeing Facebook ads with links such as Metrodeal.com/Dealspot. The "Dealspot" trade name actually belongs to yet undisclosed company owning the copryright and trademark to "Dealspot" and "Dealspot.PH" which is considered a copyright infringement violation. The allegation is yet to be confirmed but, if ever this is true, Metrodeal may be moving to target not only their already existing members in promoting their deals but also members of other group buying sites by aiming to ride along search results related to their competitors' names, trademarks and contents.

Still on the frontline of Metrodeal Philippine's massive marketing campaign is fake advertisements. People on the group buying scene, especially those on Facebook, are accustomed to advertisements promoting supposed to be new deals that is quite enticing in terms of details and pricing. Clicking the ad, however, redirects the clicker to a page not only without the deal offer described in the ad but also contains a form asking the user to sign up for their email marketing campaign.

A Facebook advertisement on Coron deal at 52% posted by Metrodeal.

A screenshot of the page where the previous ad leads to asking the clicker to sign up to Metrodeal's newsletter service.

Megadeals (a.k.a. Buyanihan)

Buyanihan started out well on on its first months on the group buying scene but sadly, people are starting to talk about the decline on membership rate and sales. Still, Buyanihan remains to be one of the top contenders in the Philippine's group buying scene numbering around 31,000 in site membership. In order to counter the declining sales in the core front of the group buying business, rumors has it that the company is already setting out to target the group buyers refusing to sign up to Buyanihan and its contemporaries but instead opted to support newer ones. The solution: Duplication. The idea is to set up as much group buying sites as they can (just as GroupOn does) starting out with their first born, Megadeals. Born oversized and definitely spoiled by its parent site, Megadeals promises newer and better deals by offering deals from the Philippine's top food companies. Or rather "buying" the approval of latter mentioned companies to post deals to their site by allegedly subsidizing a huge part of the discount. "Sounds like bribing to me", says a source. "These discounts are obviously fake and does not follow the norms of fair dealing.", added he.

So what? It's business anyway and fair business is not business, if that's where they want tot go. Nevertheless, people who already signed up and ordered will quickly notice that, even if there are indeed new deals on the site, the site itself is obviously a duplicate (only the design was changed), the ordering process is the same, and the rate of service is also the same. In other words it is the same. Only the name was changed. Nevertheless, the new group buying site has already gathered enough followers (thanks to Globe Telecom's SMS flooding service) to get started and is doing fairly well considering that they have just started late March of this year on the group buying business.



(...to be continued)