The deals web sites ripped off the business owners. This doesn’t really cause any damage to your business. The real damage to your business is the reputation.
Why? A service or a product was normally selling at $40, but now a customer and use $20 to buy it. Let’s think this from a customer’s prospective…… This is a ripped off, it is now selling at $20 and I believe the company is still profitable but this was selling that at $40. Customer will not come to buy that service/product for the original price again.
This may not cause major impact to businesses that sell products, but it definitely cause damage to businesses that sell service.
People who bought the deal will go to your shop to get the service that they paid for (at a 50% discount price). Will they come again? As far as what I have got told from my friends.. NOPE. Those customers who bought deals will not come back again.
Most of the people who bought deals from those deals web site are “DEAL Hunters”. They hunt for cheap deals and get cheap service. When your service is not selling at discount price, they will not come.
So if your intention is to draw more customers from those daily deals web site, don’t bother to try them. As you will not get any promotion effect out of it. To run a business, you want return customers, you don’t want someone just come once because your price is cheap and never come again.
As a conclusion, daily deals will not help your business, but make you to do something for nothing, sometimes, you even spend money for nothing. You may consider a proper advertisement to advertise your business instead of running deals.