The document discusses a social group buying platform called NetOutlet that was built using Drupal and Drupal Commerce. Some key points: - NetOutlet allows consumers to earn discounts on purchases by buying together with friends, with the discount increasing for each additional friend. - It was developed using open technologies like Drupal 7, Drupal Commerce, and other Drupal modules. - Special features include Friend Purchase, which enables group buying and calculates additional discounts, and Ask Your Friends surveys, which allow users to gauge friend interest in a product before purchasing.

1. Social Group Buying using Drupal

2. l Founded in Jan 2012
l Business idea: Combine elements from Social Shopping
with those from Deal Sites to create a new shopping
experience that benefits both consumers and retailers
l Website designed and implemented by Exove using
Drupal & Drupal Commerce, among other Open
technologies
About NetOutlet

3. l Online sales channel
l Allows partners to sell products and services at
discounted prices without weakening their own brand
l Allows consumers to EARN a discount when buying
together with their friends
l NOT a deal site with a GIVEN fixed discount
l Discount increases for each additional friend and is
symmetrical so that everyone in the same group of friends
gets the same price.
l Core segment: social products
l Concerts and culture, sports events, package travel
NetOutlet in a Nutshell

4. l Framework for building commerce sites
l Huge community behind both DC & Drupal
l FLEXIBILITY
l It takes best from D7 features, such as entities
Why Drupal Commerce?

5. l Drupal 7
l Drupal Commerce Kickstart 1.x
l Facebook integration modules
l Views, Panels & Display Suite
l Rate & VotingAPI
l Maksuturva integration
l SASS & Compass for CSS authoring
l onMediaQuery for responsive Javascript
Main Technologies Used

6. l Friend Purchase – the mechanism that allows
consumers to buy products together with their friends
l Facebook integration
l Initial discount calculation
l Additional discount / refund calculation
l Ask Your Friends survey – allows consumers to gauge
how interested friends are in buying a particular product
so they can get an idea of the final price before
committing to buying it
Specialized Features

7. l Have to be registered through Facebook so the system
can identify consumer’s friend network
l 1. Initial discount
l When viewing a product, the system checks if friends have
already bought it and automatically generates a discount
l 2. Additional discount
l When buying a product, you leave the purchase open for a
certain time so friends have time to join
l Once the time expires, the system automatically calculates
the final price based on how many friends joined
l Any additional discount is refunded to your payment card or
bank account (through Maksuturva)
Friend Purchase
How does it work?

8. l When viewing a product, and if the user is logged in
Facebook, the system retrieves the list of friends from
that user.
l Then checks, from all the previous orders, which ones
were purchased by the friends of the user.
l With this info, the system calculates the discount based
on an algorithm.
l Once purchased, the system stores in the line_item
entity a timestamp indicating when the Friend Purchase
will finish and the status of that order is changed to
Friend Purchase Pending
Friend Purchase
How did we implement it? (1/2)

9. l The system has a cron task that periodically checks
which line items, being in Friend Purchase Pending
status, have consumed their Friend Purchase time.
l The system retrieves again the list of friends from
Facebook and checks how many friends have
purchased in the interval.
l Finally, the system calculates the new discount, which is
refunded into the user's account through Maksuturva
l And, last but not least, the order's status is changed to
Friend Purchase processed.
Friend Purchase
How did we implement it? (2/2)

10. l A starting price and a minimum price
is negotiated for each product
l The marginal discount per additional
buyer get smaller by a fixed
percentage (typically 20-50%)
l The discount means that products
are sold at the minimum price only
with a high number of buyers
l The discount structure is transparent
and each additional buyer’s discount
is clearly displayed
Friend Purchase
The Discount Mechanism
FeeDiscountpotential
Discount 2
Discount 3
NetOutlet
commission
Discount 1
Starting
Price
Minimum
Price

11. Friend Purchase
Demo
l Three friends: Bender, Fry & Leela, want to go together to
some football matchs, so they purchase a season ticket
l Price for season ticket is 195 euros
l Bender purchased 2 items, getting 18 euros discount for each
item.
l Then, Fry purchased 3 items, getting a 33,75 euros discount
for each item.
l Now, Leela can see that their friends purchased 5 items in
total, and she can have a huge discount starting at 34,87
euros
l Later, the system will refund the money back to Bender and
Fry depending on Leela's purchase.

13. l Allows consumers to gauge how interested their friends
are in buying a particular product so they can get an
idea of the final price before committing to buying it
l Users are able to create surveys where they ask who is
interested in purchasing a certain product together
l Surveys can be shared on Facebook timeline, in a
private message, or by email
l Only users that are Facebook friends with the survey
creator are able to participate in the survey
l After the purchase, the user can send messages to their
friends based on who was interested
Ask Your Friends Survey
How does it work?

14. l When the user clicks on the 'Ask Your Friends’ button, a
node from content type 'Surveys' is created.
l Thanks to Rate module, we can configure nodes from
this Content type to use a predefined Survey.
l Then we can process this Rate voting and send
messages to the users, etc...
Ask Your Friends Survey
How did we implement it?

16. Any thoughts or questions?
Thanks!