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Comment by AlexMuir | Hacker News Reader

Partly - but people who like trying new restaurants are going to keep trying new ones. Not stop because they found somewhere they like. They might like the next place even more - and at half the price I'm sure they will.

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"Not stop because they found somewhere they like"

I bet the average person would go back and/or recommend the restaurant to friends if they had a good experience though.

This article would seem to indicate that that's not really the case.

According to the article, less than 32% of the customers visited once.

"The 32% that said they didn’t make a profit from the program reported that customers rarely bought more than the coupon deal and few returned to the business at a later date."

If over 68% of the customers returned, then I'd call that a huge success.

No, That quote is about the businesses, not the customers.

Customers from 32% of the businesses did not return. 32% of the businesses said customers did not return. Hmmm... seems like the same thing to me.

As someone else noted the sample is very small, likely to only cover a dozen restaurants, so were talking about 6-7 places that wouldn't use it again. Also if you look at the comments made by the restaurants a lot were complaining about fraud (people photocopying groupons) and low tipping rather than lack of repeat customers (although there are a few along those lines as well).

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