NEW YORK — Online deals company LivingSocial is cutting 400 jobs worldwide, or about 9 percent of its work force, as the deals market continues to face challenges.
LivingSocial spokesman Andrew Weinstein said Thursday that all but a few dozen of the cuts are in the United States. The company’s sales force faced the highest number of cuts, while others are in customer service and editorial, the people paid to write up the deals. Living-Social said it is moving its customer-service operations to Tucson, Ariz., from Washington, D.C., where it has its headquarters.
Weinstein said the job cuts came as part of a review of LivingSocial’s global operations. He said the review was designed to make sure that the company has the resources it needs to invest in areas that are “critical to the future,” such as marketing and mobile.
Over the past year or so, online deals have gone from fad to a much-copied business model that’s easy to set up but difficult to sustain. LivingSocial is one of the largest of the online deals companies, behind No. 1 Groupon Inc.
Earlier this month, Groupon reported a small loss for its third quarter.
Business, Pages 22 on 12/03/2012