by Gary Schine
The other day, I was in a restaurant
where a customer presented his Groupon to the waiter. Then, a
customer at the next table, clearly a regular as he addressed the
waiter by name, asked “what's that certificate thing all about”.
That got me wondering: Can daily deal
sites cause resentment among regular customers who miss the deal?
Could some of these customers be resentful that a flood of new
customers are getting what appears to be a huge discount, while they
pay full price? Are daily deals rewarding people for not being
customers of a business?
Some people don't know about Groupon
and very few people now about the full and burgeoning list of Groupon
copycats. Some of those people may be regular customers of the store
or restaurant that just ran its Groupon promo.
By the time a customer presents a
Groupon, the deal is likely passed, and unavailable to the regular
customer who accidentally learns about it.
It seems to me that daily deals are in
essence, the opposite of loyalty programs. While loyalty programs
reward regular customers for their continuing patronage, daily deals
reward non regular customers with a fat one time discount. I guess
that's not really fair: they actually reward anyone and everyone who
is wise to the program, to get a one time discount, previous customer
or not. But with a daily deal program, the regular customer in the
restaurant who asks what that Groupon thing is all about gets nothing
more than an explanation. If that same customer asks about a loyalty
program, he'll get his own card for the program with a stamp (or
whatever) that puts him on the way to his stated freebie.
Take away for merchants: Evaluate all
your promotion options as objectively as you can, before signing on
the dotted line.
