Shopping as a Team Sport

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you'll have noticed that my new big thing is a nifty website called Groupon. In a nutshell, Groupon negotiates huge discounts (and I do mean huge) with popular businesses who are keen to find new customers, with an unmissable 'deal of the day' for each major city. In fact they are so choosy about making sure their offerings are exceptional, that Wall Street Journal reported that said that Groupon reject seven out of eight deals they are offered...

The details of deals  are sent to the 2.5m fans via their free daily email, who then have a limited period (hours to days) to sign up or miss out. And if your Groupon deal recomendation leads others to sign up, you'll get your account credited, thereby encouraging you to buy, and recommend even more... Yes it's quite addictive...
But the important bit is that it's also part of a growing consumer trend being called 'Collaberative Consumption' that you may notice is starting to change the way you buy.

 
But what is collaberative consumption I hear you cry...? Well the collaborative consumption online hub describes it as "the rapid explosion in swapping, sharing, bartering, trading and renting being reinvented through the latest technologies and peer-to-peer marketplaces in ways and on a scale never possible before", as in Groupon's case- where they invite local businesses to offer you discounts, and you bring together a community to take advatange of them and get further money off too. And there are plenty of  other examples of how trading online is bringing people together and saving us money (EBay, the online marketplace that puts perfect strangers in touch with each other to do a deal together, was a very early example... Holiday house-swaps, Zipcar car sharing scheme etc)
 
And why are we bothering? Well, whilst in these austere times we are finding more and more creative ways of saving ourselves and each other a few bob, we're also all trying to chip in together and consume less because we know we can't just keep buying more and more stuff, especially stuff we're not even using much... The average power drill is used for just 12 minutes over it's entire lifetime!
 
Much better to hire a DVD from Lovefilm's recommended movies (basedon ratings from your fellow 'Lovefilm' community) than buy one in Tesco, and so on. So embrace the new phenomenon, connect with your consumer community to borrow something, do a deal, swap stuff..... Pitch in, and save a few quid too- what's not to love?