Daily Deal sites are really only effective in their local market.
International Daily Deals sites like Woot.com and deals.ebay.com have some great deals. These larger daily deals sites can afford to sell some goods at close to cost. Some insane deals we have seen recently include a Phillips 47″ HD TV $865 USD (1275 NZD). These normally sell in NZ stores for $3400!
Unfortunately if you are a NZ consumer, taking advantage of these international deals will most likely be a challenge. Shipping charges make it cost-prohibitive to purchase items from overseas. By the time you get the product here, shipping and customs charges might no make it so cheap. International shipping charges make a cheap item, expensive. And you’ll find a lot of US and international sites won’t ship outside of the US for commercial reasons.
So the only way to get a really good deal from a daily deals site, is to stick closer to home. The large array of daily deals sites in NZ are going to be your best option.
This means that local daily deal sites have the home advantage. No big multinational can come to NZ and start a NZ version of their site. It would be very extremely hard to do. So NZ daily deals sites are safe from big overseas competitors like Ebay Deals and Woot. It seems competing against each other is the hard thing.
What do you think? Could it be worth trying to ship over a TV from the US if you got a good price? Add your comments below.
