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Groupon

American worldwide e-commerce marketplace

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authorityQ852787
Source-derived summary

Groupon, Inc. is an American e-commerce marketplace that connects subscribers with local merchants by offering activities, travel, goods, and services in 13 countries.

The company launched in Chicago in November 2008 before expanding to Boston, New York City, and Toronto. As of October 2010, Groupon was available in 150 cities in North America and 100 cities across Europe, Asia, and South America, with 35 million registered users. By March 2015, Groupon served approximately 500 cities and 48.1 million registered users.

As of 2024, Groupon operates with a leaner workforce and has shifted focus to digital vouchers and services after discontinuing much of its physical goods segment.

Groupon was created by former CEO and Pittsburgh native Andrew Mason. The idea gained the attention of his former employer, Eric Lefkofsky, who provided $1 million in seed money to develop the idea. In April 2010, the company was valued at $1.35 billion. According to a December 2010 report conducted by Groupon's marketing association and reported in Forbes magazine and the Wall Street Journal, Groupon was "projecting that the company is on pace to make $1 billion in sales faster than any other business, ever."

In its first earnings release as a public company, Groupon reported a 2011 fourth-quarter loss of $9.8 million on an adjusted basis, disappointing investors.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Groupon” is american worldwide e-commerce marketplace. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Groupon, American and worldwide, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2008, 2010, 2015, 2024—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2008-01-01. For this dossier, Groupon, American and worldwide is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american worldwide e-commerce marketplace” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q852787. VIAF identifies the subject as 187248936. The Library of Congress control number is n2011073800. 4 of 20 selected statements include explicit references; 17 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2008, 2010, 2015 and 2024.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Groupon”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Groupon primary sources, Groupon archive and Groupon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Groupon”?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Groupon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.