Going Local or Global: The Case of Online Daily Deal Company TicketMonster

TicketMonster is a deal-of-the-day coupon site which utilizes the Internet and mobile infrastructure to offer deals in Seoul and other cities around Korea on services at restaurants, cafes, spas, and so forth. Following the company's rapid expansion, management made the decision to expand the scope of TicketMonster beyond Korea's borders with the aim of taking on other Asian markets. To this end, TicketMonster acquired Everyday.com.my, the biggest social shopping site in Malaysia. However, it was believed that simply competing in markets across Asia would not enable TicketMonster to claim sufficient market share in light of the international expansion of Groupon and LivingSocial, two online daily deal global giants.Furthermore, competition in the online daily deal sector in Korea had escalated as local, regional and international players vied for consumer awareness and loyalty. On top of an advertising war, competition grew to the point where several sites began selling coupons while knowingly taking a loss by lowering commissions in order to attract competitive products or services for their respective deals and at times paying for the services themselves. In mid-2011, U.S.-based LivingSocial made an offer to buy TicketMonster in order to strengthen its presence in Asia.Considering these changes and challenges, what are the strategic issues regarding TicketMonster and how should the company deal with the offer to deploy its transfer of ownership to LivingSocial? This case will help readers form an opinion on the related management issues and analyses.