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The poor relative of the loyalty card, the coupon may be finding new appeal as it migrates to the till.
Helen Gregory reports
You can get dirty fingers cutting them out of newspapers, you usually forget you've got them until they expire, and you get held up at the checkout by old ladies counting out piles of them. If a consumer gets an offer in the post, it can take discipline to save the coupons and use them.There's also a chance they won't even be noticed and go straight in the bin.
Coupons, it has to be said, are not seen as cutting edge.Plastic loyalty cards, on the other hand, are seen as the highly personal panacea for busy, sophisticated shoppers.
But of course it's not that simple. It's thought that more than 48% of people have more than one grocery loyalty card while, according to the Competition Commission, only 5% of customers view loyalty cards as a particularly important service. A pertinent finding in view of Sainsbury's recent launch of its pan-retailer Nectar card.
Separately, coupons and cards are useful to an extent, but retailers are now starting to put the two together in a bid to get better results, taking the battle for loyalty from the postbox to the till.
Issuing coupons with loyalty cards at the point of purchase means both retailer and supplier can work out exactly who redeems their offers and which deals are most effective, while shoppers get the personal touch and that extra incentive to remain loyal.And, as an added bonus, printing coupons at the till is also cheaper than direct mail as the retailer then doesn't have to pay for postage.
Tesco recently started handing out coupons at tills (see box) using information from Clubcard, while Somerfield is trialling a similar scheme with Saver Card users in 30 stores. Shoppers get coupons at the till which can be used for money off products - for example,`Save 50p when you spend L2.50 or more on fruit juice'.The deals are worked out personally and labelled 'saver bonus - exclusively for you:
A spokesman says it is about making loyalty work harder for...