Discount Coupon Deal websites in Thailand
2011 has been the year of the Coupon in Thailand. A number of big start-ups have started to gain traction and competition is heating up. Thai's love a good deal and the best deals in Thailand right now can be found on the coupon sites. In fact coupon sites are now in the top 10 for Internet e commerce in Thailand now.
If you havn't looked much into online coupons then now is your chance. There are huge deals on everything from a cup of coffee to 80% off 5 star hotels in Phuket. Some of the deals you get though can be misleading but for the majority of the deals it's a win win for the customer.
How the deals work here in Thailand is the coupon deal website approaches a business with the idea that if the business agrees to do the deal they will gain all these customers that have never walked in the door before. The business agrees to say offer a coupon of 120 baht but sell the coupon for 50 baht a saving of 70%. Bonus for the customer but for the business it's an upfront cost. After the fees from the coupon company the business owner only ends up with about 30-35% of the face cost. So a coupon worth 120 baht the owner will probably get a return of 40 baht. Doesn't sound like a good deal for the business owner except that the 60% of the customers who buy the coupon are new customers that might turn into repeat customers so you could put it down as an advertising cost and if you have a decent shop you should be able to retain most of the new customers, as for existing customers it's a great way to promote loyalty.
The one problem really preventing the coupon deal websites in Thailand from exploding is how the money gets from the customer to the coupon deal website. In Thailand, bank accounts are tied to the location the account was opened. If you transfer money from your account into a different bank or the same bank but to a branch in a different province you must pay a higher transfer fee. As apposed to using PayPal where the merchant must pay the fee. That means anyone who wants to buy a 50 baht coupon it ends up costing them 60-80 baht, 80 baht if say you live in Chiang Mai and their in another bank in Bangkok. So then your saving is only 40 baht. Nothing to write home about or let anyone actually feel that's an awesome deal. Until everyone has debit/credit cards or has an account with a payment solution like PayPal customers aren't getting the value from the cheaper deals. Ensogo does use PayPal btw so most of us can get awesome cheap coupon deals.
List of Discount Thailand coupon deal websites
Information for people who want to buy a coupon deal in Thailand
You can save a lot of money using coupons for say luxury items. And luxury I don't mean a luxury hotel things like cappuccinos, expensive hair cuts, even to designer clothing. It's not something you'd buy everyday but if you keep checking the sites you might find a really good deal that you'd like.
Some things you should know though
- Paying by bank transfer you get charged fees so if you arn't buying an expensive coupon but a cheaper one say 100 baht your savings go down significan'tly try using PayPal.
- Make sure you read all the fine print on the coupon sometimes you can't buy a lot of coupons can't use them on the same day etc etc
- Sign up with the sites even if you don't want to buy a coupon because they occasionally give away computers Ipads mobile phones to get people on their site, all you do is go onto the site click buy on the free item and you get a chance to win it. Though i keep trying but i never win :(.
- Use your coupon straight away. I don't think it's happened yet but it's bound to that you buy a coupon on one of these sites then go to the business and try to cash it in and they don't honour it. Havn't heard of it happen yet but this is Thailand, it's just a matter of time.
Information for business owners
If your a business owner in Thailand and you want to get on the coupon wagon I would suggest you go with Ensogo because they have a good reach with the expat community promote a lot on Facebook to expats and their site is actually in English and well written. Here are some tips and things you should consider. The biggest thing you should know is even if you ask for a limit of coupons per person you could get one person by say 5 coupons but sign up to the site in 20 different names now they have 100 coupons for the one person, this looses the business money so you NEED to make sure you put provisions into the coupon to say they can't do this, this is a huge scam so you need to protect yourself.
- People try to scam the system you need to be aware of this and ask for conditions to prevent this like a clause to say ID must be displayed to cash in the coupon and make sure the coupon is non-transferable and only 1 coupon can be used at a time.
- Don't make the offer last too long. You want to get the people in as fast as possible and prevent people from buying too many of your coupons per person. Make the coupon available for only a month, no longer.
- Once the coupons are sold you only get 50% of the money then. You get the other 50% once the coupons have expired, that's just how these sites work, so when someone cashes in the coupon again let's say for 120 baht you receive you only have 20 baht in the till and will be making a loss sale until the coupons expire and you get the other 20 baht.
- The people coming to your shop with the deal have probably never been there before, so make sure you inform your staff well about the deal and offer the new customers incentives or a further explanation of the deal and everything that you offer. Have something written up for your employees so that they fully understand what your doing and how to answer the questions. Getting your employees to go and buy a coupon even if you pay for it is probably the best way to train them.
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