LivingSocial Leaves Maryland County Feeling Left Out

If a business wants to market through a popular daily deals website, chances are that they can; especially if they’re located in a populated area and have other businesses wanting to jump on board.

This is however, not the case in Prince George County, Maryland.  With over 2,300 businesses, almost one million residents, and a median income of $70,000 residents believe their county is a prime area for LivingSocial deals. 

Angel Guzman is the manager of one of two Elevation Burgers’ in Prince George County and would jump at the opportunity to be on LivingSocial. “I would marry it. That’s how much I would love it.“

Christol Williams, owner of Christol Salon and Spa in Clinton has applied several times to get on LivingSocial. She says they “made it as far as the interviewing process, a phone interview and it just didn’t go anywhere from there.”

You’d think that a daily deal site would jump at the opportunity to bring enthusiastic merchants on board. Williams was adamant about finding out more. She checked LivingSocial’s website and discovered that there were no other businesses in Prince George County featured on the site.

That fact came to the attention of Prince George’s County Chamber of Commerce President Rhonda Slate, who tested the theory with the same result. “As a test case, [I] put in my ZIP code and did a search for restaurants and spas and the closest that came up was 14 miles away in Montgomery County,” she said. “It’s a very hurtful feeling to be honest.”

LivingSocial’s response to inquiries: “while some county businesses are featured in the D.C. section of the site, the county ‘does not have enough merchant variety’ in core categories like restaurants, spas and other social activities to be featured as a hyper-local market.”

So what DOES it take for an area to be included? I guess Prince George County will have to wait.

Source: WJLA.com