Anything with group buying in the title has been link bait in the marketing world for the last few months. The sector has exploded in Australia, but if all those emails from Spreets and Jump On It become perceived as spam, what will crawl out of the can in its place next?

It may have been in our Orwellian premonitions for a while, but location–based mobile marketing is finally upon us. It threatens to kill off the largely annoying and untargeted group buying industry as it exists today, and we can hold it in our hand.

News Limited's Yellow Pages bounty hunter TrueLocal.com.au have clocked up over 16 thousand downloads of their location–based deals app on iTunes, and have dished out deals from 2400 businesses, and they're just getting started. Traditional letter box marketing company MoneySaver (also operated by Marketing magazine's publisher Niche Media) has a Deals app about to launch, and some of the popular group buying platforms are in a good position to stake a claim on the space as well, as consumers continue to look for savings in just about anyway they can.

"If you go back before the internet; deals and coupons were not a big market in australia," TrueLocal.com.au CEO John Allan tells Marketing magazine. News Limited owns one of the largest clip coupon businesses in the states, it's a big market. But in Australia, there has always been a view that people don't want to clip coupons out of the Sunday papers. There has always been a bit of a cultural cringe. If we were going for coffee, I wouldn't get a coupon out of my wallet, it's not done."

Allan explains that it’s not just the GFC that has made Australians reach for their wallets and pull out a coupon printout instead of cash.

"The rising cost of living has made us more price conscious," Allan explains. "The second thing is, retailers in Australia have taught us never to pay full price again. And the third thing is we now have technology, we can redeem deals via Mobile phone. Mobile has made that thing that was cringe worthy kind of cool, you are now a leading edge of consumer, and you're a smart shopper if you use them."

Allan says location–based deals are a simple idea that are now technologically possible, and should be the next force in coupon marketing.

“There's now 23 deals players in Australia. We're going to see rationalisation, and two or three are probably going to win in that space," Allan predicts. “The industry will evolve from focusing on the ‘deal of the day’ to deals around me. You will be able to get the best deals around you, not just your city, and the supplier will give you those deals based on your past behaviour, and will push deals you want to hear about based on preferences. There's a point where consumers go how many massages can I want?"