Internet coupon site RetailMeNot was up 57% from a year ago on Cyber Monday. CouponCabin was up 65% from last year. BradsDeals.com reported their traffic had increased by 174%, receiving nearly 16,000 visitors an hour!


New entrant into the coupon arena, Groupon.com , where local merchants offer coupons that are realized when enough people go on line to redeem them has saved its users $39,497,624 through using 910,776 "Groupons."
The stereotyped coupon-cutters; mostly women prepping for their trip to the grocery store. Gone! And the stereotyped process: someone sitting at a kitchen table with the "circular" in one hand, and one of those humongous kitchen sheers cutting along the dotted lines. Gone! Gone too, is the taboo of looking for a good deal.
This USA Today article states that one-third of all internet shoppers in October used a coupon. This article suggests that a coupon strategy must now be a staple of merchants or they are at a "clear disadvantage" according to Loren Bendele, CEO of Savings.com.
It's an interesting idea. I personally love the hunt of the coupon. But the question is this, if a "percent off" going forward is almost always available via the searchable coupon, what does that say to the consumer about the published pricing? Is everyday one of those fictional "white sales" where you get a sense that prices are falsely inflated so they can be periodically deflated for the great white sale deal?
Clearly shoppers need a break this holiday season. Let's hope merchants are really giving them one. We all need a little "Miracle on 34th Street" goodness this season, where the merchant's belief that doing the right thing for their customer is in the best interest of the business.
A very sobering line in that USA Today article I reference above is that living through these economic times has behavior-modified all of us as consumers in one manner or another. Our coupon hunting and cost cutting habits we are developing now could stay with us for the long-haul...just like those folks who lived through the depression. It will be interesting to see how merchants continue to adjust and modify their pricing and coupon support, even after this holiday season is over. My two cents: it will separate those who care with those who opportunistically cut because this 'tis the season.
What do you think?

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Coupon Crazed Christmas!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

image of Jeanne Bliss
Jeanne Bliss began her career at Lands’ End where she reported to founder Gary Comer and the company’s executive committee, ensuring that in the formative years of the organization, the company stayed focused on its core principles of customer and employee focus. She was the first leader of the Lands’ End Customer Experience. In addition to Lands’ End, she has served Allstate, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker Corporation and Mazda Corporations as its executive leading customer focus and customer experience. Jeanne has helped achieve 95% retention rates across 50,000 person organizations, harnessing businesses to work across their silos to deliver a united and deliberate experience customers (and employees) want to repeat. Jeanne now runs CustomerBliss (https://www.customerbliss.com), an international consulting business where she coaches executive leadership teams and customer leadership executives on how to put customer profitability at the center of their business, by getting past lip service; to operationally relevant, operationally executable plans and processes. Her clients include Johnson & Johnson, TD Ameritrade, St. Jude’s Children’s Hospitals, Bombardier Aircraft and many others. Her two best-selling books are Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action and I Love You More than My Dog: Five Decisions that Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad. Her blog is https://www.ccocoach.com She is Co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. www.cxpa.org