E-coupons tap youth

Electronic coupons arriving by cell phone, Twitter, e-mail and Facebook are helping generate an old standby’s comeback and bringing in new, younger customers.

Many shoppers, especially young consumers like 30-year-old April Englebert, used to reject coupons printed in newspapers and direct-mail booklets as passe or cumbersome.

However, Miss Englebert, an accounting clerk in Portland, Ore., was so thrilled when she cut her monthly grocery bill from $500 to $300, mainly by using electronic coupons, that she recruited friends and co-workers to try them.

“It’s awesome,” Miss Englebert says. “There is a lot of free stuff to be had.”

Coupon use had been declining since 1992 as consumers found less need for or some embarrassment in using them. As the economy worsened, however, frugal became cool, and their popularity grew.

Use of electronic discounts and coupons more than doubled in the first half of this year over the comparable period last year. Meanwhile, overall coupon use rose 23 percent, according to Inmar Inc., a coupon-processing company. E-coupons account for more than 3 percent of all coupons used, up from roughly 2 percent last year.

While they still represent a small part of the total coupons used, they have strong potential - growing quickly and providing a new way for shoppers to stretch increasingly tight budgets.

“It does take some significant outside forces for people to wake up and pay attention to the savings opportunities available to them,” says Matthew Tilley, director of marketing for Inmar.

On a recent grocery-shopping trip, Miss Englebert tucked a clutch of offers under her tattooed arm. Besides the store’s printed circular, she had manufacturers’ coupons she had gotten by e-mail and coupons she had bought on eBay. Using in-store sales and coupons, she bought 14 items - including macaroni and cheese, meat and other items - for a grand total of $5.98, saving $24.88.

Miss Englebert said she spends about five hours a week hunting for coupons - checking her favorite blogs for the hot deals of the day, searching manufacturer Web sites for special promotions and finding groups on Facebook or through Twitter feeds, among other tools. She even hits eBay where something like a $5-off coupon may not be of any value to someone who isn’t going to use it but is worth the 99 cents she might pay for it.

Users can print digital coupons from Web sites or e-mail, but many are entirely electronic. They can be uploaded to a store’s loyalty card or arrive on a cell phone as a promotion code or image. There also are iPhone applications, hand-held devices in stores and screens built into grocery cart handles that alert shoppers to in-store deals. Retailers continue to try new formats.

Electronic coupons offer the same benefits for retailers as any discount program: driving consumer traffic, building loyalty, increasing sales and attracting new customers.

They also eliminate printing costs, reduce paper waste, can be updated more quickly and have higher redemption rates than their print counterparts.

Coupon aggregators such as Coupons.com and Cellfire say online coupon users tend to skew younger and more affluent than the traditional coupon user. Cellfire, for example, says 60 percent of its users are between ages 18 and 35.

Technological hurdles remain in syncing electronic coupons with checkout systems and preventing counterfeiting and hacking.

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