Groupon Moves Deeper in the Discount Space With 'Freebies'

Today, the Chicago-based daily deal site launched Freebies, which, despite its name, does not offer exclusively “free” items. Rather, the new feature offers all sorts of e-commerce deals to large department and big box stores, including digital coupons, promotion codes, news about sales, giveaways and product samples.

The site launched, just in time for the holiday shopping rush, with more than 5,000 offers from the likes of American Apparel, Sephora, Best Buy, Macy’s and Nordstrom.

Macy’s, for example, had 266 coupons available as of 10 a.m. EST today. One typical example being offered on Groupon Freebies is that by entering the coupon code “TOMMY” at checkout, a shopper would get $25 off a $100 Tommy Hilfiger order at Macy’s.

The brands and retailers will pay Groupon a percentage of the amount of sales generated from the coupons.

Despite corporate tumult, including the ousting of founder Andrew Mason back in February, the daily deal site has been expanding its offerings aggressively, from automatically pushing local deals to your mobile device to its upscale restaurant reservation service, Groupon Reserve, catering to luxury-class clientele.

The Psychology of Discounts and Deals (Motiongraphic)

Everybody loves a bargain -- it’s business, but it’s also psychological.

The human ability to count is hardwired into several parts of our brains, according to this motiongraphic from eBay Deals. Even before we are able to count, infants develop expectations for what should be the result of an addition or subtraction equation. When the brain perceives larger quantities, then the specific numbers fade away and infants only understand the proportion between two numbers.

And so it is with customers and their knee jerk reaction to getting a deal. Customers will be further incentivized by larger-percentage discounts.

Learn more about the psychology of discounts in the motiongraphic below.