Coupons offer profitable business and ways for consumers to save

Here’s a statistic for you – shoppers last year redeemed over 2.6 Billion coupons last year. I clip them just about every Sunday. However, for some reason they always end up in the bottom of my purse, expired, or I forget to use them when I actually do buy the product. I even joined a website called The Grocery Game, that matched my coupons to products and told me how cheaply I could get the product for if I went to such and such grocery store.

Several companies realize my plight, and know that coupons create loyal customers. Consequently, grocery stores and other retailers are working with companies to develop ways to make coupons more accessible to buyers. AOL-owned website Shortcuts.com offers a way to link coupons from the internet to your grocery store loyalty card. Does anyone out there realize how HUGE this concept is?? Away goes the stigma of using a coupon, out goes those expired paper pieces in the bottom of your purse! And you won’t forget to use the coupons either, because you have already loaded them onto your card! Genius! SmartMoney.com lists four other coupon innovations, including:

• Coupon Kiosks – by swiping your loyalty card at certain stores, you can receive coupons based on your puchase history.


• Shopping Widgets like Mealbox, a downloadable software that allows customers to prepare shopping lists and automatically attaches available coupons


• Web coupons – now contain barcodes so more and more stores are accepting


• Cellphone coupons – the wave of the future. Company Cellfire was founded in 2005, using venture capital funding. It is privately owned, and Cellfire is the first and only company to allow customers to easily access deals from merchants anytime or anywhere through their cellphones. The company has so far issued over eight million coupons with over $29 million in savings. Their coupons are accepted at over ten thousand locations nationwide.

Someone needs to come up with a company that will link my pantry items to my shopping list and my recipes for the week along with available coupons and instore specials. There you go - free idea for anyone interested.