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Couponing is alive and well, and though it has reached a level of maturation, consumers still see it as a virtual cash reward for buying a certain brand or product and are not about to shy away from the practice.
Those perceptions and many others about couponing are in the Frankel & Co. 1992 study regarding "Consumer Promotional Attitudes and Practices."
Plain and simple: Consumers' attitudes are favorable toward coupons, and they continue to use them. Aggressively.
"Consumers are savvy shoppers. They come armed with coupons," according to Don Packard, the company's marketing communications vice president and director of research. "Consumers are getting smarter. They want to make their money go further. They're looking for value."
And they're looking for value in coupons. The Chicago-based firm's 1992 study, done every four years since 1984, shows that 95% of the 746 households that responded to the survey said they either like coupons very much (73%) or somewhat. Ninety-nine percent reported using coupons at some time or another.
"You thought, by God, we'd reached the saturation point in coupons," said Packard. but "the economy said otherwise. Consumers have no problem with coupons. They can save a lot of money."
Coupon proliferation, however, could drive manufacturers and retailers into new modes of promotional operation. Although coupons won't go away, "we think manufacturers are going to have to reach out to other methods for a tiebreaker."
Subsequently, Packard sees event sponsorships, tie-ins, premiums, and cause-related campaigns gaining prominence. But they won't displace coupons. They'll just help build the kind of relationship marketing Packard believes will help differentiate their brands. Frequent-shopper programs will also gain popularity. All of the above offer opportunities for continued aggressive couponing.
In fact, consumers are so attracted to saving money that frequency programs offer a great opportunity, Packard believes, to transcend most sociodemographic boundaries and reach the "mass" audience once thought to be dead. "Frequency consumers come from all sociodemographic backgrounds," said Packard. "Money talks. Saving money attracts everyone."
And coupons offer opportunities to save money. Now, though, having reached virtually every household, "there's got to be more targeting of coupons," Packard asserted, which is one reason frequency clubs will proliferate, because of their ability to build brand-and category-specific data bases.
"I think that is the future," he said. "I think that trend has already started."
With consumer attitudes increasingly favorable toward coupons, you can bet on it. Manufacturers and retailers are scrambling for ways to get coupons into the right targeted households, especially with 96% of households telling the Frankel researchers that coupons are either very or somewhat helpful. Saving money was the No. 1 response for favorable attitudes toward coupons.
The targeting aspect can be seen in the 56% of respondents who said they have either much more favorable or somewhat more favorable attitudes toward brands that coupon, a 9 percentage-point increase from 1988. Interestingly, the study said, "there was not one negative comment about cheapening the value of a product or brand through the use of promotional incentives."
Subsequently, while more and better targeting is called for, consumers still expressed great diversity in where and how they collect their coupons. More than 90 get the bulk of theirs from newspapers (FSIs) and/or mailings. In-store distribution and ticket-back offers from special events also gained in popularity.
So while "you better get in the store and have effective merchandising," said Packard consumers still "come armed with coupons." But "They're making their decisions in the stores."
Coupons are helping to drive their decisions. "Because it's money," said Packard. "Consumers see it as money. It's a reward for using the product. It's a reward for being loyal. Consumers see it as a reward for their patronage. They don't overthink it. It's become ingrained in them. Consumers really like brands that reward them with an incentive. Consumers like all kinds of promotion incentives and think favorably of the brands that give them to them."
Coupons are also much easier to use than other methods, like rebates, which don't offer "instant gratification," said Packard. "A store wants everything easy to do. A coupon is easy to do." Although "other promotional tactics can be expected to "narrow the gap" on couponing when the survey is repeated in 1996, just like a certain battery-charged bunny, Packard said, "Couponing will go on and on and on. There's always going to be coupons.
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