Conversations around group buying — sometimes called collective buying — are, nowadays, almost invariably saturated with opinionated cynicism, largely due to the rapid rise of the industry, the constant and seemingly ceaseless parade of replica businesses that have followed and the one or two horror stories of SMEs treated badly by over-zealous daily deals merchants.
On Monday, Anthill will be relaunching its group buying experiment Antmart. If you’re new to Anthill, you can check out the backstory here.
We regard good business as something that happens when both organisations benefit from the relationship. Indeed, we’ve worked hard to developed criteria about the types of products that we intend to sell through Antmart. Therefore, it was surprising and somewhat reassuring to discover this clip from ChicagoBusiness.com, which details the history of group buying pioneer Groupon.
So, what kick started group buying mania?
Unbridled capitalism? Commercial gain? The allure of the almighty dollar?
According to Groupon founder Andrew Mason, the model was created to support activism.
