Get ‘em delivered and surf the coupon curl
Lisa Williams has never liked sorting through coupons, and she no longer has to at Kroger Co. grocery stores.
Every few weeks, coupons arrive in Williams’ Elizabethtown, Ky., mailbox for items she usually loads into her cart. While Kroger is building loyalty – with 95 percent of a recent mailing tailored to specific households – Williams is saving money without searching through dozens of pages of coupons.
“I’m not that big a coupon-clipper,” she said. “It seems like a lot of coupons you see are (for) things that you never use.”
Although the recession has revived penny-pinching, Americans are still redeeming only 1 percent to 3 percent of paper coupons. In contrast, the nation’s largest traditional grocery chain says as many as half the coupons it sends regular customers do get used. Kroger’s part ownership of a data-mining firm allows it to put the reams of information its shopper cards collect to use in more ways than other retailers do. And one way is to give shoppers coupons mainly for products they regularly buy.
If consumers intend to cut spending, they will have to learn how to grocery shop, cook meals at home and pack brown-bag lunches, while eating out less.
“I think that more shoppers will be trading down on their grocery shopping, such as shopping at Wal-Mart or Target supercenters instead of supermarkets or wholesale clubs,” said Stephanie Nelson, founder of CouponMom.com. “And people will definitely be trading down to store brands to save wherever they shop.”
Coupons will be cool–from newspapers and online printable coupons. In December 2007, Nelson’s site had 200,000 members who printed 81,000 coupons. A year later, 1.2 million members printed 800,000 coupons.
Look for expanded use of electronic coupons, which involves going online to add “coupons” to your store loyalty card. You then use your loyalty card at the supermarket. The coupons are applied at checkout to items you bought.
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