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Death of the Coupon
By JLP | April 17, 2008
According to this article, paper coupons are dying off and electronic coupons are taking their place. We don’t normally use coupons in our house. Why? Because 99% of the coupons are for stuff we have no business buying. Sure, there are good deals to be had from coupons, but neither my wife or I have the time or the desire to clip, organize, and use the coupons. If the article is correct, the days of clipping coupons are nearly history.
Grocery chains, food and drug manufacturers, and even coupon marketers themselves are going electronic. The concept is almost as simple as scissors and the Sunday paper: Visit a Web site, type in your loyalty codes, and find all the coupons waiting for you, electronically, at a store’s cash register or on your cell phone.
The hope is that these electronic discounts will revive the dying coupon business. Only 0.5% of the 285 billion coupons issued last year were redeemed, according to coupon processor NCH, down from an average of 1% a decade ago.
The article goes on to explain how electronic coupons work. It sounds interesting. Anything’s better than dealing with paper.
One thing I thought was one of her reasons why electronic coupons would catch on:
There’s no embarrassment. Coupons allow people who don’t like to be seen as cheapskates to get the discounts in stealth mode.
What, are we in junior high? I don’t see anything wrong with using coupons and I don’t think people should be embarrassed for using them. It’s the people like the little lady who shopped at my grocery store that get on my nerves. She was notorious for clipping the dates off the coupon. I always caught her because she always left some of the remnants of the date box so I was onto her game. Memories…
Topics: Budgeting |
