It's reminiscent of the .com crash and it gives me serious doubts about the rationality of the current tech market.
Let's sell stuff at a discount so large that the merchants lose money but we make money is not a sustainable business model, it's a predatory strategy. How on earth could you offer stock in a venture like that to the public with a clean conscience?
Sooner or later you run out of merchants, it only works for goods that have such a huge profit margin that you can actually afford that. And I rarely see Groupon deals that suggest that they're still profitable for the merchants. Why merchants do Groupon deals is a mystery to me, maybe someone that has done a Groupon deal as a merchant can shed some light on the economic returns for them.
Maybe they're out-of-band in recurring visitors or something like that but I simply don't get it. Or maybe there is something crucial about how Groupon operates that I'm missing, in that case enlighten me please.