[brk]

This is a nice statement to make, but how do you propose they could have done that?

Groupon seems to demand at least a 50% discount on normal prices, and then seems to want to take between 50 and 100% of the actual groupon coupon cost. That leaves the merchant able to collect somewhere between 0 and 25% of their standard pricing. Other than software businesses, there are few few shops that have enough of a markup to be able to sell something at 25% of face value and still make money on the product itself, much less cover all the additional overhead.

[hugh3]

Well then, I guess they shouldn't have used groupon, if groupon is only good for drawing in customers by extreme loss-making activities.

Bashing your head against a brick wall hurts, but the solution isn't to find the least painful brick, it's to stop bashing.