CityPockets found that the average time before a voucher is redeemed is 3 months, while the average life of a voucher before expiration is 7 months. The data also show that 20% of vouchers go unredeemed, just about exactly what our previous report found. By CityPockets' measurements, $1.2 billion, with a B, has been wasted on expired vouchers since this market emerged.

Scroll on for a detailed breakdown of who buys daily deals, where they buy them, what kinds they buy and more, as well as how many deals go to waste:

DealsGoRound CEO Kris Petersen says that deals are going unused across all categories, from food and drink to fitness to travel. "We're really filling a void where [the daily deal vendors] are leaving off," Petersen says, "and not because they don't care," but because it's a necessarily low priority for them.

Meanwhile, these companies are selling so many deals that the average customer is stuck with six at a time, and one or more of those goes unspent. Its value vanishes. So consumed with selling new deals and attracting new customers, coupon sites are apparently leaving hundreds of millions of dollars, and lots of new customers for their clients, on the table.

Estimating the Size of the Market

As far as the size of the table, whether DealsGoRound's $577 million is a reasonable number, it's worth doing another back-of-the-envelope calculation. Respondents to the Rice survey reported that 21.7% of deals went unfulfilled. The study only covered 23 U.S. markets, and it had a 27% response rate, meaning that the non-respondents could be significantly different from the respondents, which would leave skewed results. One possible bias would be that dissatisfied customers could be more likely to voluntarily respond to a survey.

Nevertheless, the Rice study points to surveys in different markets that had similar response rates and showed comparable results. Since DealsGoRound finds that people sit on six unredeemed deals at a time, let's assume it's reasonable that 21.7% of those - about one - goes unredeemed each time. Granting that, we could apply it to estimates of the size of the daily deals market. Wall Street analysts estimated the size of the global daily deals market in 2011 to be almost $3.7 billion, and 21.7% of that would be over $800 million. Assuming that's a rather bullish estimate - and allowing for some response bias in the Rice survey, $500 million or so in unredeemed deals sounds plausible.

The Secondary Market

DealsGoRound is among a handful of sites picking up the pieces of this secondary market, including Lifesta, CoupRecoup and Sell My Deal. There's an Australian site called redealize with international ambitions. And there's a site called dealigee, which is owned by a Chicago-based company. Chicago is Groupon country, and DealsGoRound hails from there as well. But Petersen has grown his startup from a Craisglist-style free-for-all into a PayPal-powered, feature-rich marketplace serving 128 cities in the U.S. and Canada. The pot in 2011 is up to is $577 million or so, so the race is on for the secondary daily deals market.

Good for Business?

We've written before about the open question of whether daily deals are good for small businesses, and Petersen regularly encounters the criticism that some businesses depend on deals going unredeemed to keep from breaking the bank. "Businesses would prefer for those 21.7% of people to show up," Petersen says, because that's their opportunity to up-sell customers and build loyalty.

"If people are [offering daily deals] in hopes that the breakage [revenue] is how they make their money," Petersen says, "then I think they're sorely mistaken about the value they're getting out of this whole industry."

Disgruntled Business Owners

The study from Rice found that 55.5% of businesses surveyed made money on their daily deals promotions, 17.9% broke even, and 26.6% of businesses lost money. Keep in mind that 21.7% of their deals go unredeemed, which means the businesses pocket the money.

Almost 80% of customers who redeemed deals were new customers, but only 36% of them spent beyond the face value of the deal, and the study says that only 20% of customers returned to purchase something at full price.

It would take a much bigger study to be precise, but the margins on these deals are thin, and significantly increasing the amount of deals that get cashed in would reduce their value for businesses even more. The Rice study found that just under half (48%) of surveyed businesses would definitely run a second daily deal promotion.

The study also found no significant performance differences between the various daily deal sites. No Groupons or LivingSocials stuck out from the pack as far as how well their marketing paid off for their client businesses.

Wasted Deals Are Wasted Deals

But with hundreds of millions in deals just vanishing, Petersen thinks the consumer is getting hurt, and that hurts businesses, too, ultimately. Getting stuck with a deal could lead consumers never to buy one again. By enabling consumers to resell unused deals, Petersen believes DealsGoRound helps keep the daily deals business cycle in motion.

To illustrate the secondary market opportunity, DealsGoRound has produced this infographic (see below) with their own data as well as data from Mob Manager, the Rice University study and Local Offer Network.

Have you ever purchased a deal that went unused? Let us know in the comments.

In addition, EggDrop introduces an interesting pricing model - the "falling price auction." This enables so-called "frictionless" transactions that work without any haggling, bargaining, deals or discounts. It's as if eBay has been re-imagined for the mobile, social, location-based age.

EggDrop comes from EggCartel, a company founded in 2010 by Dan Zheng and Brian Lynch, formerly of Google and Playdom, respectively. Zheng spent 8 years at Google working on a diverse bunch of products from AdSense to Android. Lynch was an early employee at Lil Green Patch, a popular Facebook game that was later acquired by Playdom.

The idea for EggDrop was sparked back in the summer of 2010 when they realized no one was using eBay anymore - at least in San Francisco, where they're based. They also felt that the buying and selling experience on Craigslist was poor.

What people really needed was an easy way to buy and sell items without having to haggle on price, compete against others in a traditional auction format, and where real-time communication played a key role.

Hence, EggDrop.

How it Works

The mobile app, available on both iPhone and Android (arrives tomorrow), is a classified ads service for selling goods. Snap a photo, post a description and list your item. You can then share the listing on Facebook, Twitter - and, in a smart twist, even straight to Craigslist. A Craigslist buyer is directed to a webpage that explains that this item is available for sell within the EggDrop app, and offers links to download.

Buyers can search for items based on proximity to their current location, as determined by their phone's GPS. Filtering options let you sort by item type, see photos, view items on a map and more.

EggDrop's "Falling Price Auction" & Game Mechanics

The other unique idea with EggDrop is its pricing model for selling goods. A seller lists both a starting price and a minimum price, the latter hidden to potential buyers. The price falls over a period of 72 hours until someone purchases the item. This isn't the same as eBay's minimum price, which is used to stop a sale if bids don't reach a certain threshold before the auction ends. Essentially, it just automates the pricing for the item for sale, letting the market dictate what a fair price should be.

To keep users engaged with the application after first download, EggDrop uses game mechanics. Buyers can "watch" an item and see how many others are watching that same item along with them. This encourages users to buy before their competition does, but they can also risk waiting to see if the price drops.

There are also "karma" badges which users can give each other depending on how things went with the sale. Good badges can reward timeliness of responses, those who went "above and beyond" - for example, someone who helped you carry the couch you bought down 3 flights of stairs - and other behaviors.

Bad badges can penalize negative behavior like "flaking" out on an appointment time or on agreed sale or selling a lemon. These badges only stay on your profile for 3 months - long enough to discourage the behavior, but not so long as to indefinitely penalize someone who was just having a bad day.

Vs. Zaarly

EggDrop isn't the only company rethinking local commerce. Another new startup, Zaarly, launched this spring with its own mobile, real-time, location-based market. So what's the difference? "Zaarly is a buyer-powered market," explains Zheng. EggDrop is more seller-driven. "We want to enabled local commerce and connect local buyers and sellers," he explains.

Download EggDrop

The mobile application is free to download and will remain free going forward. In the future, the business may offer additional services for a fee, like providing convenient drop-off locations for goods, or providing shipping services through third-parties.

But for now, EggDrop just needs to get through its launch and grow its user base. The company says it will initially focus marketing efforts over the next 3 to 6 months in large, metro markets including San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Boston.

EggDrop has received $1 million in seed funding in a round led by SV Angel and BlueRun Ventures, with participation from Trinity Ventures and Charles River Ventures. You can learn more about the app at EggDropApp.com.

According to the Nielsen Company, today already 9 million U.S. mobile subscribers claimed to have used the mobile web to pay for goods and services. While that number appears to be high, it only represents 3.6% of U.S. mobile subscribers, which shows that m-commerce is in its infancy.

The current crop of mobile shoppers is still very much rooted in the early adopter crowd and consists of more men (4.9 million) than women (4.3 million). Out of these early mobile shoppers, adults ages 25-34 are the most likely to have made a purchase.

Of course, when you think of mobile shopping, the image that comes to mind is surfing mobilized versions of web sites via the phone's browser or visiting the customized pages designed just for the growing number of iPhones. Although the number of users shopping this way has increased - up 73% from April 2007 to April 2008 - there's also another growing trend for m-commerce: shopping via SMS.

Some services already exist today that let shoppers send text message to a phone number or mobile shortcode in order to purchase goods or services. The spammy commercials selling ringtones and wallpaper may be representative of this trend, but other more reputable brands are also venturing into this territory as of late.

For example, a fav millennial clothing retailer, American Eagle Outfitters offers a "send to phone" service that allows you to send AE products and descriptions to any phone via the use of a special shortcode (23595 - which spells AELYL or "American Eagle: Live Your Life). You can send items to your phone or your friend's phone and a link in message takes you to a mobile web page featuring that item, its description, pricing, and locations where it can be found. The idea here is that you could take your phone to the store, show it to a representative, and they can help you find and purchase the item. However, this almost m-commerce experience is only one click of a button away from a "buy-it-now" full-blown mobile shopping solution. If AE shoppers could set up profiles in advance, saving their sizes, shipping address, and credit card info, there's a potential to turn what's now just a mobile sharing experience into true mobile shopping.

Another company pursuing a mobile shopping strategy is Amazon, having recently launched a mobile shopping service called TextBuyIt that works via a shortcode (262966 - AMAZON). Shoppers can text to this shortcode with the name, model number, or ISBN number of a product to see if Amazon offers the product for sale, as well as read a summary of the item and see its current price. An included link in the reply also directly links to the product page, where you can purchase the item with a one character response.

Amazon's TextBuyIt

Even the world of traditional media is looking to embrace m-commerce. For example, in May, Hearst Magazines Digital Media, a unit of Hearst Magazines, partnered with ShopText to offer a text messaging service to their magazine audience which includes Cosmopolitan, CosmoGirl, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, O, The Oprah Magazine and Seventeen. Thanks to ads in the pages of these popular magazines, shoppers will be able to buy products, request free samples, and enter sweepstakes by sending texts to the shortcodes provided.

M-Commerce Concerns

In order for the m-commerce trend to really take off, though, some consumers' concerns will need to be addressed, most notably: security, airtime charges, and reliability. According to Nielsen:

• 41 percent of data users who do not participate in mobile commerce say security is their biggest concern
• 23 percent say they worry about being charged for the airtime
• 21 percent say they don't trust that the transaction will be completed

However, if retailers can prove that these mobile transactions are "safe, affordable, and efficient," says Covey, "...more consumers will come to view mobile shopping as a compelling and viable option."