One of the unpublicized secrets of economics/marketing is that there is no number you can put on something to define what it "should" cost, or how much it is "worth". The value of something, or the price of it, is simply what people are willing to pay. There is certainly the cost of producing the item. No one can sell for that price or less without losing money (not that it doesn't happen -- for good or nefarious reasons). But above that, the market decides.
So, discounts and coupons and the many other manipulations of price, are a marketers way to try to "segment" consumers according to how much they are willing to pay. For example, suppose you sell some product, say toothpaste, that costs you $2.50 to make. If you sell it for $3.00 to everyone, you make 50 cents profit on each tube. However, you can probably make more. There might be some people who aren't buying it, but would if it only cost $2.80, and there might be some people who are buying it, but would still buy it at $3.20. You, the producer of toothpaste are losing money either way. So, you can raise the price to $3.20 to get 20 cents more from the customers who would pay more, but then you could make 40 cent coupons available, which will allow the customers who are only willing to pay $2.80 to buy your toothpaste, too, and you get 30 cents of profit from them whereas before you were getting nothing. Of course, whether you're better off in the long run depends on how many of each kind of customer there are.
When it works, it is a way for marketers to get customers to segment themselves according to their own price-sensitivity. For someone who doesn't mind paying $3.20 its not worth the time and effort to clip coupons. But for someone who would only pay $2.80, the coupon lets them pay that price.
Sales and discounts work the same way. As long as you make it a little bit harder to get the lower price, there will usually be some customers for whom the discount is not worth the effort.
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