I think new people will only come when a clear bottom has been found, too many price speculations are going on. The long term chart doesn't look particulalry attractive for people to jump in
It seems like long term, as more companies take bitcoins, its going to bring price down. No one wants to go through the hassle of buying more bitcoins once they spend them, or buy some and risk waiting 4 days (with coinbase) just to see them worth less by the time they can use them.
It only only be easier to get coins in the future. I don't think that will be much of an issue. Look how much easier it is to buy coins now than it was 18 months ago, where there were no companies doing this. Now there are several large companies converting fiat to btc. As btc continues to be adopted, it will be easier to obtain, and the price will probably be more stable too.
As to whether this long term downward trend we've been on will continue, I couldn't say. And I actually don't know if more merchant adoption helps or hurts price. On the one hand, more merchants in theory should equate to more people using the coin, thus more demand. On the other hand, no merchant holds bitcoins, they immediately convert to fiat, so this is a huge negative on the supply side, as merchants are constantly selling.