Groupon madness, estimate your short and long-term profit or loss

It seems that you can’t avoid Groupon in the news lately. Consumers are mad about using Groupon since they can find great deals at often unheard of discounts. Even for customers, there is a often a down-side with reports of customers mobbing unprepared businesses and leaving frustrated or unhappy with the experience.

My review of multiple profit estimates shows that without a high rate of repeat business, your Groupon gains will likely end up as a big loss! However, if you can handle the volume of business and are considering offering Groupon at your business, you should download my spreadsheet to estimate the short and long term profitability of your participation.

1) The example used in the spreadsheet is based on a local restaurant. Their standard entree cost is $32.55 with the Groupon deal offered at $14.79. The fee to Groupon is half of the $14.79, leaving the business with $7.40 to cover $8.90 in marginal food and staff costs.

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The lighter side of pie charts and bar charts

Stephen Few is famous for railing against the frequent overuse of pie charts. Overall, we agree with Stephen, pie charts are frequently misused when other chart types would likely be a superior choice for exploring and understanding the data at hand.

In our training classes we sometimes ask students why they (or their boss) prefer pie charts. The answer is typically “because”. That’s about it. They have often given little thought as to why this is their favored choice, but all the standard applications make them easy to generate and “expected” by their managers.

Eileen has pondered if the fascination with pie charts started during our childhoods. Particularly with our childhood love of pizza and dessert pies. Children often debate which piece of pie is “theirs”. As a result, it is only natural as adults to assume

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