By having coupons, it would be easier to schedule fewer cashiers and sales people on the floor and have them focus on stocking etc. When running weekend of week

By having coupons, it would be easier to schedule fewer cashiers and sales people on the floor and have them focus on stocking etc. When running weekend of weekly sales the stores could temporary increase the number of workers in the store. By taking away the ability to more easily anticipate surges in customers they lost the ability to keep variable employee costs down (without hurting their image and becoming known as a poorly staffed and slow store... "hey I need a tie now! I don't want to wait for a sale. Let's go to JCP. No wait, its going to take forever to get checked out, I'll go pay $5-$10 more from HIGHER END DEPT. STORE and save my frustration.") EDIT: Yes, I realize that if the stores are measuring foot traffic and sales they should still see a pattern however I would be willing to bet that the graph would be flatter with fewer and less drastic highs and lows.