Show 139 Feb 6th 2011

Hi Guys

The part of this weeks show that interested me was Groupon, or coupon-ing.  As it rightly suggested it is a race to the bottom and surely this can't be good news for anyone.  Not even the consumer, as it will ultimately lead to either reduced competition, product quality and/or quantity reductions.  Over here in the UK we have been seeing a war between several "comparison websites", for those who haven't seen these sites, they allow you to say shop for car insurance and you enter your details in once and they compare deals from all the major companies.  However, lately we have seen a few major players in markets such as car insurance have openly removed themselves away from this and have started to openly market the fact that their deals are not on such sites.  I can certainly see the coupon bubble potentially goind down this route.  But I do think it will depend on how the major and stronger of the brands deal with this area.

Marcus

twitter.com/topicking