Guest Thinkers — June 2, 2011

What Markets are Being Disrupted by Groupon?

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In researching Groupon’s IPO for the earlier post, I tried to think about which markets are being affected by Groupon. The biggest is almost certainly Yellow Pages ($26Bn worldwide) — but there’s also Online Local Advertising ($10Bn and growing) and Coupon Books (probably much smaller?).

Are there others I’ve missed?

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Why would Groupon IPO?

Going public now allows Groupon to establish dominance against their competitors. They can encourage a perception from the public markets that LivingSocial et. al. are “Groupon Clones.”