EVOLUTION OF COUPONS

When it comes to Shopping… Coupon is the second name of saving,

but have you ever thought

“Where did I come from???”

1887 – I was born

A French word “couper,” meaning “to cut” was the first foundation element. Later in year 1887 my father “Mr. Candler” (A genius businessman) discovered me to promote his new soft drink Coca Cola for 5cent. Being with me for more than 100 years, I guess-millions of you must have clipped your way to savings.

Following my father’s trend, even others began to drag me for their business rivalries.

As I’m close to my 125th anniversary, let me share a brief timeline of my achievements:

1930 – Sudden rise of Coupon Usage

The Great Depression of 1930 allowed me penetrated into the market as customers were looking for new ways of saving money. My fan falling grew by leaps and bounds as a means of drawing customers away from neighborhood stores.

Continuously the coupon usage was being encouraged & the period of ten years from 1965 was the boom for Coupon Industry, when it captured over 75% of the American households

Coupon Statistics (1965-75)

1975: New era of paper coupon and booklets

As people were finding me useful, many Industries began to spread me in variety of ways. I appeared with magazines & in pamphlets for door to door distribution. I was grouped in the form of booklet of different offers & adopted by every retailer and customers. Later on I was replaced by a new form of direct mail coupons which provided local businesses with an inexpensive way of distributing coupons.

I had been popular as a money-saver with astonishing popularity levels for almost a century. But slowly I was losing my identity due to my high execution cost per year for the retailers, which was almost $7 billion and consumers saved only $2.9 billion with my redemption.

1990 – My Replacement: E-Coupon

As the technology advanced, later in the 1990 ; I was replaced with a coupon which was almost similar to me but entered via a popular medium in the market i.e. “Internet-” and known as “E-Coupon (delivered via email)”. By this time emails were highly accepted by customers & they enjoyed e-coupons benefits by printing it based on need.

2008 – Penetration of Mobile Coupon

With the introduction to Scan-able Mobile Phone Coupons in 2008, we (Paper Coupon & e-Coupon) met our new rival. It was highly advanced with on the go redemption feature and named as “M-Coupon”. It brought about a revolution in coupon industry & the effects can be clearly seen in our next blog “Step Towards Mobility”, which will show, how mobile coupons have swayed the way one saves.