From Coupon Rage to Shopper Satisfaction

The unstoppable rise of couponing, and the industry challenge of enabling it to scale

The history of the coupon itself is interesting; it goes to the late 19th century, when the first coupon-like vouchers were given out by Coca-Cola of all companies, in an effort to popularize its beverages. Since that time, coupons have evolved from simple paper vouchers to digital promotion codes and mobile text offers in an attempt to engage consumers as part of the buying experience.

What a long way we have come. One can say that today, consumers have an addictive – if not just a habitual – attachment to coupons. However, the addiction to promotions is felt equally by both the retailer and the consumer sides of the equation.

Retailers have motive to embrace promotions as a trusted means to increase store and online traffic and, therefore, drive incremental revenues by attracting and retaining customers in highly competitive markets. However, nearly 100% of retailers have lost at least 5% operating margin in price and promotion execution, according to a recent survey from Coresight Research. The proliferation of over-stacked promotions has created a technological strain on retail infrastructures, desperately trying to enable promotion execution. Siloed internal teams create promotions for different intents, and complex, multi-channel promotions are often beyond the scope of legacy systems’ capabilities, leaving retailers unable to execute them successfully or at all.

The addiction has spelled a perennial search for value amongst shoppers who seek coupons, online rewards, and brand promotions with an impulse to save somewhere. At the same time, this abundance of offers has also become frustrating at checkout when to get the full value, a consumer has to wrestle through the complexities of using multiple promo codes or coupons for their purchase, both in-store and online.

This frustration is acutely felt by all internal stakeholders of the retailer ecosystem. That is, the merchandising teams pushing for trade promotions are drowning in the quantity of promotions to manage. But they did not come in a ready-made manner. The brand promotions were not reconciling with the conflicting incentives of different promotion strategies. The Digital/eComm Team has its own set of challenges. Coupon Rage falls heaviest on in-store cashiers. Sometimes dealing with frustrated shoppers and other times with malfunctioning systems. And the frantic calls flood the IT Teams when systems slow down or don’t calculate promotions properly.

Enter Unified Retail Promotions Automation: a way of tapping into the power of promotion that promises to (a) transform the retailing horizon by simplifying the couponing process, while (b) at the same time delivering a connected customer experience. Advanced analytics and innovative coupon management platforms will help retailers eliminate errors and discrepancies, and reduce friction at the point of checkout to enhance the experience of customers, and most importantly, their satisfaction.

Unified Retail Promotions Automation empowers retailers to create and control a consistent customer experience, delivering the best value with properly stacked promotions at checkout. This helps the retailer to unify promotions offered across channels, gain insights from consumers on their behavior, and create new sales opportunities from the received data through targeted marketing.

The addiction has spelled a perennial search for value amongst shoppers who seek coupons, online rewards, and brand promotions with an impulse to save somewhere. At the same time, this abundance of offers has also become frustrating at checkout when to get the full value, a consumer has to wrestle through the complexities of using multiple promo codes or coupons for their purchase, both in-store and online.