Daily deals are essentially products. It is not until recently that there are specialized stores selling discount vouchers exclusively (daily deal websites). Even more recently, there are places selling daily deals from multiple daily deal providers (daily deal aggregators) and platforms to buy and sell still-useful daily deals (daily deal marketplaces). (There are even white-label solutions to help people produce these daily deals). It is as if daily deals are, say, mobile phones. You can buy a Nokia mobile phone from an authorized Nokia dealer or even Best Buy, and you can easily sell it for money on eBay or Craigslist while its warranty is still valid.

To be specific, daily deals are effectively commodity products. A daily deal of a certain category is virtually indistinguishable from another of the same category, except on price. The funny thing is that daily deals are meant to acquire new customers and build brand loyalty, but we know that it is impossible to build brand loyalty around commodity products. No consumer will be loyal to Groupon if Groupon is more expensive than LivingSocial; daily deals are insidious that way.

Unfortunately, daily deals are commodity products that also surreptitiously commodify the products or services to which they are attached. Daily deals are run so often and priced so low that it almost signifies that the underlying product and service is worth very little to begin with. If a business offers discounts more often than it charges full price, the discounted price will be eventually be perceived as the normal price and the full price as the normal price with surcharges and we’re-feeling-greedy mark-ups. What is worse is that daily deals are offered to and targeted at new prospects and not exclusively to loyal customers who have been paying full price for months or years. It is a form of betrayal. It temporarily wins over cheap bargain hunters while losing the loyalty of real brand enthusiasts who actually spend money.

For all we know, daily deals could permanently change retail commerce as we know it – in the future, nobody will sell at full price anymore. Or maybe daily deals will lose its original character (i.e. rare and genuine discounts of value) and just become a default marketing gimmick, supported by price fraud and (waning) consumer irrationality. This is a distinct possibility, but daily deals are probably here to stay, whatever their form.

Where do you think will daily deals be in five years’ time?