[reeses]

What people say and what people pay are not strongly correlated. :-)

Coupons can give a 100-10,000% lift very easily, enabling web merchants to be less dependent on black Friday/cyber Monday/etc. They can shift demand earlier in the year to even out fulfillment stress and reduce the uncertainty in sales projections.

In the face of realized revenue vs. some perception of unhappiness, sales and marketing will take the buck eleven times out of ten.