The Official OfferMe Blog

Nadim Sharbean compares the Group Buying revolution to the rest of the eRetail world.

Fair’s fair: we harp on a bit about our Group Buy service. So today I’ve decided to look at some of our so called competitors and the things they’re offering you…

Billy Corrigan was speaking from a well-wizened view when he penned the lyrics:

“The World is a vampire… Set to drain.”

Dash away thoughts of Twilight and instead focus on the Nosferatu type, with horribly long fangs and sucking the blood of anything that crosses it’s path. Then you start to see the type of horrible image Corrigan, the Smashing Pumpkin’s frontman, was getting at.

Group Buy Guaranteed

The truth is, the world is full of blood-sucking beasties that’d happily drain our livelihood. And A LOT of them can be found on the ‘net. Gone are the days of chain letters received by post, threatening to burn your house if you failed to send $5 and forward the letter. Gone are the days of door-to-door salespersons, just asking for 5 minutes of your time. Gone are the fly-by-night vendors that set up stalls in village malls to pawn off their wares before disappearing with the dusk.

Where’d they go to? The worldwide web; where everything is for sale and every seller’s as credible as their pretty flashy images.

Thankfully services like PayPal and Verified by VISA have come along to help offer you some assurance. At OfferMe, we have aligned ourselves with one of the country’s biggest banking corporations, Westpac, so you know that we’re legit and properly handling all funds. Additionally, all non-Group Buy purchases can be made via PayPal, adding to our credibility. With Group Buy, although PayPal isn’t available for the feature, we offer a complete Money Back Guarantee, meaning if you don’t get the product you’re after, we’ll fully refund you!

Group Buy vs Auction Sites

Nowadays though, these steps aren’t enough for everyone. Web browsers are smart enough to look out for the score. So what is the score? How does Group Buy match up to other services, such as ‘net auctions and penny-bids?

Well, I believe Group Buy stacks up favourably. Don’t just take my word for it, let’s compare them!

To start off we need understand the basic principle of economics: supply vs demand. For those of us that did some form of Business Studies, Commerce or Economics in high school, we’ll all remember that graph our teachers introduced us to on Day 1:

Supply vs Demand

Quite simply, the more that products are supplied, the lower the demand becomes. The inverted relation between the two is the basics of every economic design. It’s why our government has done their best to ban monopolies and promote small businesses. In the end, higher competition leads to better benefits for all consumers.

So how does this relate to the ‘net?

As the old saying goes: the more things change, the more they stay the same. The supply vs demand module is constantly in practice within online retail world. Yet sometimes it becomes so skewed that we fail to see what’s going on.

Take, for example, online auctions. A BluRay Player supplier comes onto one of these sites to sell his item. It’s one device and he lists it at a low, low price. Users start to bid and compete against one another for the device. Demand starts to rocket and, because there’s technically only one of the device supplied, the price rockets up. In the end the supplier makes a decent enough sale for the item to still be profitable in his book. Also, he’s generated interest in his wares, attracting other buyers to his eStore. Most buyers are usually so depressed at missing out on the auction deal, that they’ll sate their desire through buying the device at the normal market price. Sound stupid to you? Yeah, well it actually happens. That’s why eRetailers all have ‘shopfronts’ on these auction sites.

With OfferMe’s Group Buy though, the supply vs demand module works in economic harmony. The more of our users that want the device, the lower the cost becomes. This price setting process begins before the Group Buy deal is advertised. Through OfferMe’s original platform our Deal Detectives see the type of demand our users have for certain items. Then the negotiate prices based around that demand. As most of our users can attest, this usually leads to some favourable savings, up to 85% off the recommended retail prices.

Group Buy vs Auction Sites

Group Buy vs Penny-Bid Sites

Similar to online auctions, penny-bids are a one product pony; everyone fights it out for a single object. With these sites, users buy credit from the server and then bid the equivalent of one cent on an item. Every time a new bid is made, the price of the item rises. At the end of the auction period, the highest bidder wins. You’ll see ads for these sites promoting things like Nintendo Wii’s going for a mere $11.32. Which, on the surface, sounds great. What they fail to also openly advertise is that every bid that has been placed is collected! So, if you were second last to bid on that Wii, you spent $11.31 for nothing! Does it still sound that great? If the site feature 20,000 users and each bids up to a mere 10c for a $400 Wii pack, that penny-bid sit just made over five time the cost. Sure, one user got a massive saving, he ‘won’ the Wii. But 19,000 other users were definitely losers.

OfferMe’s Group Buy though isn’t about one lucky user. Group Buy ensures multiple users get the same savings. Yeah, so perhaps the Wii won’t go for $11.32. Yet, if you spend money on OfferMe you get what you pay for! In fact, the products are ALL you pay for with OfferMe. There are no user fees or registration charges. It’s simply the price of the product and delivery. Further, we hope to see between 10-20 people taking advantage of our prices. It means we’ve found something else that you like. We even encourage you to tell your mates about it. There’s no ‘one-off-special-discount-for-you-only’ deal going on here. As we say, with Group Buy everybody wins!

Group Buy vs Penny-Bid Sites

So do you see why we harp on about Group Buy? To us it signifies a revolution on the ‘net; instead of allowing faceless merchants from around the world to dictate terms to you, OfferMe gives you the power to demand better prices on the products you’re after. And right now the site’s still growing! Get behind this eRetail revolution now and take back the control. After all, it’s what you’re demanding.