Publications
Publications
- November 2000
- HBS Case Collection
Clust.com: Dream More and Pay Less
Abstract
Clust is a French group-buying Web site. Instead of marketing products to consumers, Clust is marketing aggregated consumer demands to manufacturers. Consequently, beyond the usual act of choosing among predefined alternatives, consumers are expected to bring up their demands and create new product ideas, to discuss and support the ideas of others, to call on their friends to join the Clust community, and to monitor the efforts of the Clust purchasing team. In fact, Clust holds no inventory beyond a warehouse to organize deliveries. No product is put on sale before enough supporters endorse it and 5%-40% discount on retail price can be secured. After a very interesting launch strategy, the Web site comes short of breath. Two pathways are outlined (focus on group-buying and good deals vs. focus on consumer creation and exclusives) with enough details to support decision making and evaluate both profitability and concept consistency.
Keywords
Citation
Wathieu, Luc R. "Clust.com: Dream More and Pay Less." Harvard Business School Case 501-047, November 2000.