eBargainBuddies

eBargainBuddies is the next-generation bargain shopping application that enables users on social network site Facebook to interact with their peers and share content about sales promotions on their favorite products that they find in store in their area and online. These sale promotions occur in the form of deals, coupons and freebies (items available for free) that people find but have no medium to inform all of their friends about them. Thus, eBargainBuddies is also an innovative flyer distribution model that uses the global newsfeed and built-in word-of-mouth of Facebook to distribute posted sales promotions by a user on eBargainBuddies through their social graph to keep their friends in-the-know. As a result, the newsfeed provides a personalised flyer for each user of all the deals, coupons and freebies found and posted by friends on eBargainBuddies, keeping them in-the-know of sales they may be interested in.

 

From a consumer perspective, eBargainBuddies as a bargain shopping tool addresses the shortcomings with the word-of-mouth model for bargain shopping and paper flyer distribution to allow users from all over the world to do what many find most important – saving money. We do this by automating the word-of-mouth process for deal sharing through social networks and presenting a plethora of shopping links to our users of sales on their favorite items both in their area and online. We take advantage of the viral advertising that is built into Facebook through the newsfeed and the global scope of a user’s social graph to keep people in-the-know of product promotions. No longer does a person have to hope to be informed of a big sale by their friends. This makes bargain shopping far more efficient as communication becomes less reliant on tightly coupled interaction and more on timely uncoupled methods like instant messaging or social network communication; with this transition, it only makes sense for word-of-mouth for bargain shopping to follow the same trend. It also supports the Go Green philosophy by reducing paper flyer consumption.

 

From a business perspective, eBargainBuddies starts a new and creative movement in marketing technology that we call the eFlyer Program: take advantage of the Facebook newsfeed to create a next-generation flyer distribution model. The eFlyer Program built by eBargainBuddies improves business-consumer communication and distributes sales information on products of businesses when they post on eBargainBuddies; this distribution of sales content, which is traditionally destined for paper flyers, occurs to the newfeeds of their loyal customers (friends) on a medium (Facebook) that users check frequently.

 

eBargainBuddies has the potential to change the way flyer distribution occurs for businesses, away from paper flyers and extending the reach of their product promotions by keeping more people up-to-date of their sale activity. Even if a business does not cease to use paper flyers, propagating sales information through a social network reaches other consumers who would be missed or "forgotten" in the paper flyer model.

Omar Sheikh is the Chief Executive Officer of SoCreative Solutions Inc. which is the umbrella company for the eBargainBuddies project. Omar is a doctoral candidate at Carleton University, Ottawa, in Communications Engineering. He completed his Bachelor's with Honours from Carleton University in Computer Systems Engineering in 2004, and moved to the University of Toronto and completed his Master's in Communications Engineering in 2007. Hafiz Abdulla is the Co-Director of the eBargainBuddies project. Hafiz completed his Master of Business Administration (MBA) in early 2008 from the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. Hafiz received a Bachelor of Commerce, Information Technology Management majoring in Telecommunications, from Ryerson University, Toronto, in 2005.