![]() So what should deal sites do? Acknowledge the truth and evolve. As long as deal sites keep promoting this party line, they’ll continue to flounder. The daily discount site mantra to merchants of “get them in cheap and they’ll return to pay full price” is fundamentally flawed. Sure, mobs of customers show up armed with 50% off coupons, but few go on to become repeat customers once the discounts end. The real problem facing Groupon is “seller fatigue”: merchants are finding they are not getting a positive return on their Groupon investment. Penney - its sales have nosedived by 27% primarily because the chain stopped offering weekly deals. I doubt this, because consumers really love good deals. So what’s causing this drastic demise? Many claim “consumer fatigue”: consumers are tiring of deals. Just last week, LivingSocial laid off 9% of its staff. Over the last month, founder Andrew Mason has faced repeated rumors that he may be ousted. ![]() In a little over a year, Groupon’s stock price has fallen from a high of over $31 to under $4. Success stories like that have been in short supply lately for online discount sites like Groupon. Wow, I thought: That’s a lot of GPSs to move in a short period. A day or so later, ready to purchase, I went to the Groupon web site only to discover that over 25,000 GPS units had been sold and the deal was no longer available. Shortly after making this decision, Groupon delivered a great deal to my email inbox: a factory refurbished Garmin GPS ($240 list price) for $69. ![]() ![]() After recently getting lost for the umpteenth time, I decided to join the 20th century and purchase a GPS navigation device. ![]()
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