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Dull Daily Deals

Written by George Anderson

Are consumers going numb to the plethora of deals coming their way on a daily basis?

"There is definitely a risk of oversaturation with these daily deal programs," Kit Yarrow, a professor of psychology and marketing at Golden Gate University, told MainStreet. "Consumers can develop an increasing tolerance to that sense of the thrill of a bargain, and eventually it just stops being thrilling."

According to Prof. Yarrow's research, consumers are getting eight to 10 deal emails a day.

"I think consumers are approaching a new normalcy for bargains where they have come to accept the bargain as being the standard price, reducing their impact," Prof. Yarrow told MainStreet. "After all, if everything is always on sale, then the sale price becomes the new full price."

LivingSocial, one of the major daily deal sites, reported that it sold more than four million daily deals between April and June this year. The company pointed to massages, Mexican restaurants, yoga classes, pizzerias, mani/pedis and golfing vouchers as being the daily deals that consumers signed up for most. LivingSocial, as a ClickZ report pointed out, did not say how many of the four million deals were redeemed.

A new site is looking to eliminate any boredom associated with daily deals by finding offers that are relevant to the individual tastes of members. KoalaDeal is said to use information gleaned from a consumer's past purchases and interests to find matching deals on other sites.

According to Springwise, "Users begin by teaching KoalaDeal about their tastes and interests; they can choose categories manually or simply let the site automatically scan their past purchases in Gmail or their interests as indicated on Facebook or Twitter." KoalaDeal then uses the information provided to go searching for deals.

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