Interest check: Group Buys

If you are an automotive enthusiast (the type that likes to beef up engines), you have probably heard of group buys. Buyers come together and tell a parts distributor that they all want to buy some product at the same time. The buyers get the product at a significant discount, and the distributor gets to move a bunch of product all at once, without having to worry about advertising expenses, etc.

I think that that model of doing business might have a chance in SL. It would be nifty if we could get that implemented with the auction system, if Linden Lab ever gets around to letting us auction our own stuff. In the mean time, it could be handled by a third-party site, or by a group leader keeping track of participants in a notecard.

The model would look something like this:

1. Some users get together to buy some product, or set of products.
2. The leader is usually whoever came up with the idea to start the group buy.
3. The leader contacts the person who sells what the group wants.
4. The seller responds with something like, "I'll give you a 10% discount if you can get 10 buyers, or a 15% discount if you can get 20 buyers."
5. The group leader relays this to the group. Unless the discount is really shallow (like 2% or something), the group usually accepts.
6. Each group member pays the agreed price to the group leader, or to the seller, or to an escrow service. The group buy cannot proceed until the minimum number of orders has been paid for.
7. Once the seller has the money, or once it has been secured by the escrow service, they give a copy of the product being sold to everyone in the group.

Let me know what you think...

Obviously this has some applicability or potential here in SL.

The major difference between here and the real world, however, is that there is no advertising cost, per se, to overcome here. If you consider time to advertise as a cost here, then ignore the previous sentence.

With essentially no "real" cost in terms of Lindens to advertise products here in SL, this idea does not, IMHO, reduce any costs on the part of the seller. It only, potentially, increases profits due to increased sales.

Then again, I would buy as part of a group buy if it lowered costs on an item I was interested in - provided there were some customization capabilities... why drive/fly an exact copy of someone else's item? Just not my thing.

(However, like I have said elsewhere, I find myself buying fewer and fewer vehicles the longer I am a resident ... or other items for that matter. That's off-topic tho.. so fergeddaboudddit).

It's a great idea Huns!

SLExchange.com would be happy to help you with this project.