When LivingSocial came out with their $20 Amazon.com gift certificate for $10 a while back, it officially jumped in as a player within the daily deals game. Especially with the built-in incentive to share deals socially. If 3 of your friends buy the deal, yours is free. This is enormously more enticing than Groupon’s “the deal is on” minimum that need to sign up for it (which they seemingly haven’t fallen short of for months now.)
But if an Amazon gift card made Living Social a daily deals player, what if Amazon itself became one? What? THE online retailer? Yes, that one. AmazonLocal has now expanded, including in Windy City Strategies hometown of Chicago.
But, here’s the problem. It’s not integrated with Amazon’s site yet. People trust Amazon for online purchases more so than any other online retailer. And if Amazon can figure out how to integrate these local deals more elegantly than a daily push e-mail, it’s going to be unstoppable.