When I began to look into "coupon strategies" this week, I realized quickly that this is a well trodden topic on the intertubes. When I sifted through a great number of "how to coupon" sites, one strategy jumped out at me as a good way to start: a blog called The Simple Dollar originally posted the idea that you should find coupons in the Sunday paper and then wait a month to use them. This is because manufacturers use coupons first in their product marketing cycle as a way to boost sales, and then move on to discounting. So, if you wait to use the coupon you increase your savings because you are using a coupon for a product already on sale. The popular blog Boing Boing picked up the story and it drummed up a lot of comments. Some common themes were:
1) It's not worth the time to clip coupons unless you view at as a hobby in addition to a way to save money.
2) Coupons are usually for "bad" food-- that is processed, non-fresh, unhealthy products.
3) Related to the above--when couponing, you have to be careful not to get derailed into buying things you wouldn't normally buy because "it was such a great deal."
4) Many Sunday-paper coupons expire before the promoted items go on sale.
These ideas are fueling my belief that big companies with giant marketing budgets aren't dumb and coupons are an effective tool to get consumers to spend MORE on high-margin products like processed/prepared foods. But, I'm not giving up hope yet. Next I think I'll look into coupons for healthy items/organic brands and try not to use this California Pizza Kitchen coupon I found on my Hannaford receipt.
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