Survey: 85% of Local Merchants Haven’t Run a Daily Deal in the Past 6 Months

In yet another stroke of bad news for daily deals, a survey conducted by Reply.com found that the majority of local merchants in the U.S. haven’t run a daily deal in the past six months. More than 6 out of 10 respondents said it’s unlikely that they’ll run such a campaign in the near future.

According to Reply.com’s “Pulse of Local Business Survey,” which summarizes responses from more than 1,300 local businesses, 85 percent of respondents said they haven’t run a daily deal in the past six months.

Surprisingly enough, Google Offers got a bigger share of the response from local merchants that actually ran a daily-deals campaign in the past six months than Groupon and LivingSocial.

With an eye to the future of this diminishing industry, Reply.com asked respondents how likely they are to run a daily-deals campaign in the next 3-6 months. Forty percent said it’s very unlikely that they’ll run a daily-deals campaign in the next 3-6 months, while 21 percent said it’s unlikely and 21 percent said they’re unsure.

While Andrew Mason’s firing received plenty of attention earlier this year and sparked a steady comeback for the company’s stock price, it hasn’t done much for how eager merchants are to use Groupon’s services. According to Reply.com’s survey, 89 percent of respondents said there has been no change in their consideration of using Groupon to market their business in the future since Mason’s departure. Only 3 percent said they’re more likely to use Groupon now, and 8 percent said they’re less likely to use the company’s services.

The survey also found that very few respondents look to LivingSocial and Groupon for their business promotion needs. More merchants are turning to Myspace and Instagram than the two daily-deals companies.

Last week, LivingSocial announced that it was shuttering its Adventures business, which offered consumers local events produced in-house.