This guy is missing the point. Small businesses have to buy exposure because they don't have the capacity to generate it. Big brands that have exposure, fans,

This guy is missing the point. Small businesses have to buy exposure because they don't have the capacity to generate it. Big brands that have exposure, fans, advertising, etc don't need Groupon & Co - it's one of many options they have for acquiring new customers. Also, as Groupon and Living Social do customer acquisition deals where they cover the discount in order to get people to sign up (Groupon has done it too, although I'm not sure I'm allowed to say which deals we did it for), then big brands enter the picture as audience vendors to the deal sites. So LS pays $10/customer for Amazon's brand equity. The local spa doesn't have brand equity so they buy customers from LS or G for 75% (in practice more like 30-60%) of that customer's bill. He's also WAAAAYYYYY off when he says local businesses are being left behind. Groupon has done a couple dozen national deals, and while there are more and bigger ones to come, there are some large number, call it 1,000 for round number purposes, deals a day, spread over ~500 cities, almost all of them from local merchants. Amazon was the first national deal I've heard about LS doing so I assume they're about the same.