[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.