Consumer awareness and engagement with daily deals sites is mushrooming in the US, with two-thirds of customers saying that they have downloaded a printable digital coupon from an online marketplace, according to market research firm Morpace. The most popular sites were named as Coupons.com and Groupon, ahead of SmartSource and trailed by LivingSocial and Valpak in a survey of 1000 US consumers. The rise of group buying sites, driven by market leader Groupon, means that 94% of polled consumers say they are aware of the online coupon system. Despite this a third of consumers say their coupons were not satisfactory, and Morpace suggests this may be down to unrealistic expectations and misinformation about the service.
Around a third of those surveyed named Google as their favourite place to find coupons, despite the fact that the search behemoth does not currently offer the service. Morpace suggests that this means consumers would like to see a deals feature on the site in the future. Morpace analyst, Andrew Smith, says that the research was initially prompted by Google's unsuccessful bid for Groupon. "If and when Google does decide to get into this marketplace, they have a huge branding advantage compared to some of the competition. When Google provides a forum...consumers will consume," he says. Mobile coupon sites and third-party platforms such as Foursquare were not included in the research.