Daily Deals News: LivingSocial Claims Their Deals Are Working; Selling AmazonLocal Deals In Chicago

Livingsocial Claims Their Deals Are Working For Merchants
After Business Insider published the disappointing results of a survey it conducted among businesses that had run their daily deals promotions on Groupon, competitor LivingSocial reached out with the results of a survey it held among 369 businesses that had used LivingSocial for daily deals promotions. It found that the vast majority made a profit or at least broke even on their daily deals.

Daily Deal Clones Ripe For Acquisition
A study by M&A outfit 451 Group has revealed that daily deal clones are ripe for acquisition. So far this year there have been 36 acquisitions worldwide with Groupon as the most active acquirer; gobbling up 20% of the clones. 96% of the daily deal sites that were acquired were founded 2 years ago and 63% started out in 2010.

AmazonLocal Launches in Groupons’ Home-town Chicago With The LivingSocial Sales Force Selling Its Deals
Two months after a soft launch in Boise, Idaho, Amazon expanded its daily deal offering AmazonLocal to Chicago, the home town of daily deal giant Groupon. But wait, selling daily deal offerings to local merchants requires “boots on the ground” in the form of a large local sale force calling on small businesses and Amazon is a pure online company. That’s where LivingSocial, a Groupon rival in which Amazon made a major investment, comes in. For now, to get AmazonLocal from the ground, sales people from LivingSocial are roping in the merchants for the AmazonLocal daily deal offerings. But down the road Amazon is planning to hire its own sales force and that could mean Amazon will be competing against its own investment partner, LivingSocial.