[alexwestholm]

"Groupon and other group-buying services let consumers eat their cake and have it too." To me, that doesn't sound like something consumers are going to abandon very quickly. The notion that collective buying will somehow fade in the eyes of users strikes me as pretty odd - it's a flat out better way to buy, and groupon does a great job of getting worthwhile products to consumers at deep discounts.

Of the points you mention, I think Groupon's greatest worry is probably that retailers may not make the margins they'd like when using it. But even that's a difficult complaint to make work - fundamentally retailers compete with one another and Groupon is a great tool to leapfrog your competition, even if just for a temporary period.

[brk]

To me, that doesn't sound like something consumers are going to abandon very quickly.

No, but it requires retailers to participate. When the prevailing trend seems to be that retailers lose their ass on the deal, and then don't win over enough new long-term customers to justify the cost, the model is going to need some refinement over time.

[alexwestholm]

Maybe so. In my comment I noted that retailer issues are a far better criticism of Groupon... The OPs analysis is focused far more on consumer issues, which I think is an inaccurate view of what's going on.