Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters, presented here for discussion.
Online coupon users tend to be younger, have larger households, and are wealthier and better educated than clippers of newspaper FSIs and the general population. Eight of ten of these online consumers are more likely to print a coupon if it is relevant to their reading content.
That is just part of the emerging picture of today's online coupon printer that came from an online coupon study conducted by Coupons, Inc. The survey results were integrated with national consumer data from Simmons Market Research Bureau to provide a broader perspective on changing trends in usage and how online coupon users compare with the general population.
Results were presented by Francis Garcia, vice president of marketing solutions for Coupons, Inc., at the annual Industry Coupon Conference recently in Miami. The event was hosted by the Association of Coupon Professionals (ACP).
The data from Simmons shows that online coupon usage now accounts for 22.4 percent of coupon market penetration. One of three (36 percent) of online coupon printers has children under the age of 18 in their household. Nearly half (47 percent) are between 22 and 44 years old - a whopping 28 percent more than newspaper FSI clippers. And online coupon printers are 40 percent less likely than newspaper FSI clippers to be over 60 years old.
Online couponing is reaching larger and wealthier households: 61.2 percent have household incomes of $60,000 or more, compared with 56.6 percent for newspaper clippers and 52.6 percent for the U.S. adult population.
Here are more key takeaways:
- Seventy-seven percent say the value of the coupon affects their willingness to provide personal information. For a $1 coupon, more than half of online coupon printers were willing to give their email address and demographic data. For a $2 coupon, nearly two-thirds were willing to give anything from email address to postal address;
- Most (43 percent) of printable coupons are obtained at general savings websites like Coupons.com. Manufacturers' promotion websites are second (31.9 percent), followed closely by manufacturers' brand websites (31 percent) and retailer websites (30.8 percent);
- Over half of online coupon printers are more likely to click on an ad banner or open an e-mail if it is enabled with a coupon.
Discussion Questions: What do you think of the potential of online coupons as a customer driver? What do retailers need to know about the difference between online coupons vs. FSI coupons to fully capitalize on their traffic-driving potential?