DealOfTheDay posts

Groupons and WagJags are fuelling the bulk of our lifestyle expenditures these days. My impulse purchases are pretty well under control when I'm out and about in the real world, shopping at bricks and mortar stores. My online purchases, though, are a whole other story.

I wouldn't say we're completely out of control or anything, but our spending in this household has definitely shifted – the man hasn't golfed yet this season without some kind of online deal in hand and all of our oil changes are pretty much paid for until the end of the year now, thanks to these websites.

I was trying to explain it to an older friend: It's a lot like the next generation of coupon clipping, in my mind. It is that, agrees Jeremy Zuker, WagJag's founder and general manager, but it's a lot more as well.

Move over Groupon. There's a new group buying club in Canada. Deal of the Day launched last week and is currently offering deals in Toronto and Montreal. This all-Canadian group buying club, owned by RedFlagDeals.com and Yellow Pages Group, believes it can serve consumers best by taking a slightly different approach to the group buying experience by placing a larger focus on merchants.

At first glance, this might seem counter-intuitive, but founder Derek Szeto believes consumers will benefit from the relationships Deal of the Day has fostered with merchants. After all, for group buying clubs to be able to offer the deals consumers want, merchants have to be interested in participating.

And for merchants to want to participate, Szeto says they're looking for two things, "First, a risk-free way to be able to get customers to their door. [With Deal of the Day], they don't pay anything upfront. They pay only a commission based on what gets sold. And second, some level of promotion, of generating awareness and hype so people know their business exists." Because of the well-established Yellow Pages and RedFlagDeals.com platforms, Szeto believes Deal of the Day can offer more awareness and more visibility to merchants, leading to more successful deals for consumers.