Pizza lovers rejoice! Domino’s, world leader in pizza delivery, is offering 50% off all pizzas ordered online at menu price through Dec. 9.

And today (Dec. 6th), 52 countries are celebrating the second Global Domino’s Day by offering the same deal via Domino’s Pizza Facebook pages around the world, where an app directs them to their local Facebook page. Last year, 19 countries took part in the brand’s first-ever global offer with more than 500,000 people taking part, and this year, more than 90% of Domino’s stores worldwide are participating.

“Domino’s is proud of our global presence, and we’re thrilled to spend this one day bringing Domino’s fans from around the world together with this special offer,” said Dennis Maloney, Domino’s Pizza VP of multimedia marketing.Continue reading...

The challenges facing Groupon are mounting as the daily deals pioneer struggles to create a viable business model. As Reuters notes, interest by consumers and merchants in its daily-deal local offerings continues to wane, and it is far from clear that the Chicago-based startup can offset the decline in the bulwark of its original business model with other services that will generate enough business to keep it afloat.

Accordingly, Groupon's market capitalization has dropped to just $1.8 billion, down 90% from nearly $13 billion when its stock went public at $20 a share a year ago in the second-biggest US IPO since Google. Key executives and salespeople continue to jump ship, while it's also coping with controversy over its accounting methods.

Even though Groupon had more than 4.3 million customers last month, and "an annual run rate of nearly $1.5 billion in global billings and nearly $500 million in revenues shortly after its one-year anniversary in September," according to a company spokesperson, the now-apparent weakness in its business model means that imitators, such as the Amazon-backed LivingSocial, are having unprecedented problems.Continue reading...

New York-based Gilt Groupe, the billion-dollar, members-only flash sales website, has just launched its first TV campaign. Two commercials (above and below) play up the Gilt brand of designer deal-shopping (in a cab, and in a gunfight that plays on Gilt's noon deal-posting) in time for holiday 2012. The Gilt campaign comes as Groupon, a rival deals website that relies on email to publicize a more general range of local daily deals, is struggling financially.Continue reading...

The stock woes of Facebook, Zynga and other can't-miss investment darlings of the internet have distracted people from Groupon's travails. But as the daily-deals website nears the November anniversary of its IPO, Groupon appears to have many long-term challenges on its plate.

Groupon has run into stiff competition for signing up the local merchants across the country that provide the deals to fuel Groupon's discount machine. At the same time, some analysts assert, it's been difficult for Groupon to engender brand loyalty among consumers because, after all, ultimately what discount-seeking consumers want is the biggest discount — whoever provides it to them.

As a result, Groupon's growth has been slowing. And even as the Chicago-based company has tried to counter that by hiring more salespeople to sign up local merchants to provide discounts, other digital companies are trying to poach Groupon's best talent because they see weakness in the company.Continue reading...

Starbucks’ $25 million investment in and deployment of Square for mobile payments, signed Tuesday by Square CEO Jack Dorsey and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, will help spur adoption of mobile commerce in the US, with a halo effect that will be felt beyond.

Square will begin processing all credit and debit card transactions at Starbucks’ nearly 7,000 company-owned shops in the United States this fall via Pay With Square, and soon, customers will order their café du jour and charge it to their credit card just by saying their name. 

“Starbucks is one of the largest organizations in the world, taking technology like Square — simple, fast and focused on customer experience — and bringing it to a massive scale,” commented Dorsey to the New York Times.

The Twitter co-founder and executive chairman (naturally) tweeted the whole deal, sharing the big news late Tuesday night in New York and subsequently posting photos of Adam Brotman, Starbucks' chief digital officer, using Square (and tipping 30%) in a NYC taxi; the deal-signing with Schultz taken Tuesday night in New York; and a twitpic on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday morning.

It's a huge week for Square: it's also receiving some cross-promotional love from Apple. Check out the new TV commercial for the iPad (being swiped as the voiceover says "make a sale") that debuted Tuesday night, below.Continue reading...

Things seem to be a lot more serious at Groupon headquarters in Chicago these days. There are more accountants and lawyers, and fun-loving CEO Andrew Mason is cracking fewer jokes, according to a profile in Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.

That's because at least two very serious things are going on at the originator of the online-enabled, locally based discount deal. First, Groupon is straining to cope with growth expectations now that later-coming rivals such as LivingSocial, Yelp and others have mimicked its local deals business model.

But second, Mason and company have become very deliberate about advancing his plan to elevate Groupon above its competition — and to ensure its long-term future and robust growth — by becoming a key digital partner to small businesses across the range of their application needs. That means not just helping them produce a quick glut of customers responding to a Groupon-advertised coupon but also becoming what Mason calls "the operating sytem for local commerce" with tools such as loyalty programs, scheduling software, and potentially a credit-card payment service.Continue reading...

Anheuser-Busch InBev already owned half of Mexican Grupo Modelo but the world’s biggest brewer apparently needs to keep consuming all in its sight. InBev shelled out $20.1 billion to grab the other half of the brewer of such beers as Corona and Modelo and stake its claim to the growing Mexican market. The name of the website it set up to announce the deal says it all: GlobalBeerLeader.com.

It's a huge purchase, to be sure, but AB InBev sees the upside in the company as a whole and its Corona brand specifically. Modelo “is Mexico's biggest brewer with a 50 percent-plus market share in a virtual duopoly with Heineken's FEMSA Cerveza in the world's fourth most-profitable beer market,” Reuters reports. “Corona is the biggest imported beer in the lucrative U.S. market.” InBev shelled out so much dough partly because Modelo stakeholders had no real incentive to sell.Continue reading...

Target is taking the lead as the largest retailer to offer its customers Shopkick points (known as "kicks") starting today.

Shopkick, free and available on iPhone and Android devices, rewards users with 300 “kicks” just for walking-in to a store. “After 6 months in the market, shopkick reached 1 million users. Today, it is the largest location-based shopping app in the world,” said Cyriac Roeding, Shopkick CEO and Co-Founder.

Target customers can now use those “kicks” to scan products ranging from food and cleaning supplies to electronics and toys, redeemable for Target gift cards, Facebook credits, dining gift certificates, iTunes downloads and donations to charities, as well as receive special in-store deals including coupons and discounts.Continue reading...