Coupon use rises with food prices

Coupon use, on the decline since 1992, appears to be on the way up as shoppers look for ways to combat rising prices.

Forget the image of a befuddled shopper fumbling with a jumble of paper scraps just to save a few cents on cat chow. These days, coupons and promotions often are worth more, targeted to specific shoppers and, perhaps coolest of all, tech-friendly and convenient. Some can be loaded onto grocery savings club cards.

Two recent national reports indicate grocery coupon use is on the rise. One shows coupon use stopped declining last year, after a 16-year drop. Another shows consumers, even those younger than 35, are more interested in grocery coupons in the slow economy.

Bashas’ Supermarkets, which has grocery stores in Arizona, said it redeemed 13 percent more manufacturers’ coupons in the first quarter of 2008 than in the last quarter of 2007.

Bashas’ shopper Debbie Farmer, 52, of Queen Creek, Ariz., said she saves at least $20 a week by using coupons.

“I have gotten so I use coupons for everything,” Farmer said. “Prices have gone up on everything.”

The grocery store chains Albertsons, Fry’s Food Stores and Safeway also said they have observed more coupon use, but did not have specific numbers.

Some are handing out more store promotional coupons. Safeway, for instance, is giving away books of coupons worth $40 to shoppers who buy items from the store’s organic foods line and handing out a coupon for $10 off a shopper’s next bill to shoppers that buy $30 worth of selected items.

Coupon use typically rises as the economy slows, said Matthew Tilley, director of marketing for Winston-Salem, N.C-based CMS, which reported the information about the halt to declining coupon use. CMS is a coupon-processing agent for grocery brands.

The last boom in coupon use was during the tough economic times of the early 1990s, Tilley said.

In 2007, shoppers redeemed 2.6 billion grocery manufacturer coupons, he said. But shoppers could have done much better. Manufacturers distributed 302 billion coupons, worth an average of $1.28 each. Coupon values also increased an average of 10 cents last year, he said.

Tilley’s report does not address new methods of coupon distribution, such as through the Internet and direct mail to consumers who have a history of buying the product. But he said that the convenience of such methods is likely to encourage increased coupon use.

“In today’s environment, consumers expect marketing to be contextual and relevant,” he said, “Don’t give me a diaper coupon if I don’t have an infant child at home.”

Another report, by ICOM Information & Communications of Toronto, said even shoppers ages 18 to 34 are interested in coupons now that the economy is slowing. The ICOM study said more shoppers in the young demographic, 77 percent, would use coupons if they could be accessed electronically, much like the ones Fry’s and Procter & Gamble offer on the Fry’s Web site.

Tilley said he expects to see more stores and manufacturers partnering to provide electronic coupons because about 10 percent of Americans don’t ever clip newspaper coupons out of a newspaper and 80 percent don’t do it regularly. Tilley said he expects coupons to take a number of high-tech forms in the future, including cell phone downloads

Grocery Coupons Online

Grocery coupons are now available at press-citizen.com by going to www.press-citizen.com/coupons

Share Your Tips

Share your tried and true money-saving secrets with other busy moms. Send your tips to familytime@press-citizen.com. Be sure to include your name and what town you are from.

Other ways to cut your grocery bills

  • Make a list and stick to it. Impulse buys can increase bills of undisciplined shoppers by 50 percent or more.
  • Ignore displays at the ends of aisles and at checkout counters. They often are set up to encourage expensive impulse buys.
  • Leave the kids at home. Even if you need to hire a babysitter, you likely will recoup the fee with the cash you save by not buying candy, toys and processed foods children typically demand.
  • Clip coupons — then create a network of friends, family and co-workers who do so also. Trade your unneeded coupons for those for products you regularly use.

— Source: “America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money,” by Steve and Annette Economides

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