Groupon is apparently looking to open in China, but it’ll be entering an already crowded “group-buying” market. According to China Daily, a whopping 1,880 Groupon-like websites have sprung up in the country, including big names like lashou.com, letao.com, and manzuo.com. In fact, a copycat site has already even taken the Groupon.cn domain name, and looks pretty much exactly like the American site.
Still, Groupon’s strategy for eking out some market share in the world’s biggest internet market (China has a staggering 420 million internet users!) is to partner up with local internet giant Tencent, which started the hugely popular online chat program, “QQ.” I’m very curious to see if Groupon can make it in China, or if it’ll follow the cursed path of other US internet companies that tried and struggled in China, including Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon.
China’s got some seriously shameless copycats. Read about how China’s air force ripped off Top Gun for its training vids or how Chinese companies rent white people as fake “businessmen.”
