The Fall Of Groupon?

Groupon has helped many businesses reach new customers, but are these businesses ready to say goodbye to the service? A number of companies have been approached by Groupon and copy-cat deal a day sites for advertising, and they are no longer welcoming the service.

One business owner, Joe Hargraves, who runs Tacolicious, says he’s received around 40 pitches over the last year from various deals services, including Groupon. Hargraves says he has turned down all of them because his prices are already low, and doesn’t believe he’ll benefit much from a one-time deal that brings in customers who would likely never return.

Another owner, Mark Pastore of Incanto, calls daily deals and other forms of discount marketing “the lowest form of marketing, like puns are the lowest form of humor.” He too has been bombarded with pitches, about one or two a week from kids just out of college “who don’t know anything about anything.”

While this anecdotal evidence shouldn’t be taken as indicative of the attitudes of business as a whole, a recent survey of 300 business that participated in Groupon deals shows that 82 percent were dissatisfied with the number of return customers brought in by the deal, and half of those surveyed said they would not participate in future deals.

Photo by Groupon

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