AdWeek in the US has a report about some newspaper publishers playing catch-up with Groupon and announcing a shopper discount site.
Eight publishing and media companies are launching the common digital shopping platform, called Find n Save. The eight are Advance Digital, A.H. Belo, Cox Media Group, Gannett, Hearst Corp., MediaNews Group, McClatchy, and The Washington Post Co.
The consortium, set to be announced today, is expected to roll out Find n Save’s online ad products across its members’ 200-plus newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News, Arizona Republic, and The Miami Herald.
With Groupon taking more advertising revenue from traditional media outlets it was only a matter of time before we saw media companies in a copy-cat move.
My concern about Groupon and all these other models promoting steep discounts on products and services is that it will ultimately kill businesses as shoppers leave to never pay full price.
Newsagents are somewhat lucky in that much of what we sell is ‘fixed’ price.