The group buying website market in China is crazy. Back in May, Lashou was accused of fixing prices to try to keep themselves in the running; most recently, Renren’s Nuomi group-buy site was revealed to be hemorrhaging money in Renren’s Q2 financial reports. Prices have fallen as sites struggle to compete by offering the best deals.
So who’s winning? Well, that can change at a moment’s notice. In March it looked like Taobao’s Juhuasuan service had a hefty lead on everyone else. But recent stats tell a different story. Stasticial analysis firm Hitwise China analyzed the overall traffic to Chinese group-buy sites for last week (7/31-8/6) and determined that as far as traffic is concerned, Lashou has surpassed Taobao, and Nuomi and QQtuan have dropped in the rankings. A lot of things have changed since March, it seems.
Don’t believe us? Behold, a chart!
The sudden surge in Lashou’s traffic is probably a reflection of the mega $110 million funding Lashou received back in April of this year. Given that, it’s no surprise Lashou has made it to the top of the traffic rankings. Our sense is that at the moment, Alibaba Group is placing its focus on Taobao and less on Juhuasuan. It will be interesting to see how Juhuasuan will fight back, though.
It’s also worth noting that Gaopeng, a joint group-buy effort by Groupon and Tencent isn’t even on the list. At late July last month, Groupon UK told us that an unspecified amount of staff had been cut, but clarified: “We’re not laying anyone off in China, but terminating some employees for underperformance.” From what it seems, the Groupon-Tencent partnership is going to be another case study of Western company failing to expand to China. Not much damage done to Tencent, though, as it still has Tuan.qq.com under its charge.
[Via Sina Tech]
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