I came across an opinion column on Retail Customer Experience's web site, an opinion posted by Jeff Weidauer, VP Marketing at Vestcom International. In his column, he lays out reasons why he believes that coupons will become obsolete, and mobile coupons are merely delaying their inevitable obsolescence. After having just experienced standing in line behind a woman at the grocery store who had no less than 30 coupons to redeem, I must humbly disagree.
First, let's do agree on terminology. What is a coupon? When I ask my neighbors, they think of a coupon primarily as something you clip, save, and/or print for in-store redemption - usually with a barcode. They're thinking P&G, really, or the flyer you get from Bed, Bath & Beyond or Kohl's. I would argue that a coupon is merely a vehicle for "an offer." Thinking about these things as "offers" divorces the discount - the content - from the delivery - the coupon. There are two kinds of offers: mass, and targeted. Mass offers are made to anyone who wants it, and targeted offers are made to you, based on the retailer's or brand's idea of relevance (i.e., you have bought it in the past, or you've never purchased it before, or you haven't bought it recently...).
Mr. Weidauer argues that mobile coupons - scanning a barcode off the screen of the phone - is merely paving cowpaths (using technology to make an already bad process more efficient). Consumers really only say they like coupons because they can't think of anything better, akin to Mr. Henry Ford saying that if he'd asked consumers what they wanted in transportation they'd have told him 'a faster horse.' Unfortunately, Mr. Weidauer doesn't have any good alternatives, only that we must think beyond what we see today if we're to get to a good future around what is today "couponing."
Actually, mobile is the perfect home for offers. Whether I get them via SMS or through a badge alert in a mobile app, or hey, check in to Foursquare to find offers there, or even log in to a mobile-optimized site to find coupons I've saved while browsing at home - easily available as I walk through the store - digital offers, presented through a mobile device, have a lot of advantages.
If I could design a perfect offer system from scratch, I would have a virtual offer book. As a consumer, I would be able to mark offers I've received from retailers and/or brands to save to my book. I would have one barcode that I could use, that would automatically apply and mark as used all the offers that apply to a purchase. It would automatically delete obsolete or expired offers. It would alert me when new offers became available for brands or categories of products that I've opted in to be notified about. And I could use it at any store - so manufacturers could get in on sending me offers, just as much as retailers (though obviously the retailer ones would only be good at that retailer's stores - ah, but then you could get into competitive price matching, where one retailer accepts another retailer's offers...).
The world of coupons - the mass "spray and pray" delivery of coupons, the idea of marketing budget being based on "breakage" (how many people don't redeem a coupon they receive), the paper trail and the time it takes to unwind manufacturer coupons through a grocery retailer's accounting processes - yes. That all should be obsolete, and making that process more efficient is silly.
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