Groupon Launches Analytics Tool for Merchants (GRPN)

In an effort to provide comprehensive analytics on sales and customers, daily deal site Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ: GRPN), launched a new tool on Wednesday, dubbed as Merchant Impact Report. Nonetheless, the latest development failed to lift shareholders’ faith on the beleaguered company. Shares slumped 3.82% on Wednesday.

What is Merchant Impact Tool?

All those merchants who participate with the daily deal site henceforth will be able to keep track on how a deal is performing, get customers’ reaction and review or preview cost effectiveness of every promotional campaign through a ‘profit calculator’.

The service will be initially available in Canada and the U.S. The company will also supply its merchants with data about who buys the deal, gender, location and age and so on.

Groupon says that with the help of this new tool, local merchants will be able to work out how their businesses could create a profitable campaign—which until now was unavailable from other marketing research and advertising agencies.

In other words, this new tool will allow merchants to decide whether a deal is worth participating or not.

Thus far, the Chicago-based Company had partnered with over 1000 large companies to test whether such tools make any difference.   Now it is being made available to small local businesses; since, according to the company, the experiment was a success. “Merchant Impact Report was created as result of our merchants’ feedback,” said Amit Koren, Groupon’s Director of merchant’s products.

“Until today only the largest companies had access to this kind of information, and now we’re providing these powerful analytics to every local business that works with Groupon,” added Koren.

Most Wall Street’s analysts (21 out of 26) maintain “hold” ratings on the Groupon Stock, according to a poll conducted by Thomson Reuters. While three analysts have kept “underperform” or “sell” rating, two maintain “buy” rating.

The daily deal site is scheduled to report fiscal fourth-quarter results on February 27, after the closing bell.