Online Coupons on a Keychain
Have you ever taken the time to go through the coupon section in the weekly newspaper and clip out any coupons that may be of interest to you? According to the coupon-processing firm, CMS, fewer than 1% of coupons ever get redeemed. Imagine all the savings that the general population is missing out on. However, one might argue that the savings aren't worth one's time.
The founders of ScanAps believe that they have found the solution to help Americans save money without taking the time to clip coupons. ScanAps is producing a new technology which involves a usb scanner that would enable consumers to scan coupon bar-codes online, thus eliminating the use of scissors and the possibility of paper cuts. The coupons can be redeemed by downloading the coupons at the store.
This new technology has been tested and it was found that consumers actually spend 8.3% more and use a whopping 26% more coupons. ScanAps is currently negotiating with a national and a few regional grocery chains and could turn out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
2 comments:
I agree with this article. I know that myself and my family never cut out coupons from newspapers. I hardly see anyone use cut-out coupons when checking out at a grocery store. So it does not surprise me that the percentage of people who use them is this low. ALthough they may allow the consumer to save, many people do not want to take the time to search through the paper, read the fine print of the coupons and then cut them out. They also have to remember to take them to the store with them and redeem them before the expiration date. With this new technology, I'm not sure I would take the time do download coupons either, although it would be better than cutting them out. In today's society, online is becoming the way for everything. I would say this will be the new and upcoming trend.
I really do think that this has the potential to be something great and less time consuming. I really want to use coupons, seeing as I'm a college student and I'm running low on cash all the time, but the hastle of finding them in the papers, looking through the hundreds availiable (half of which are non-beneficial to me), and cutting each individual one out only to try and keep track of where I put them is a pain. Being able to do all that online and with computer systems will greatly cut back on the hastle, and I can see where it would boost sales and coupon usage. I would definately use it. We are switching everything over to the internet anyway. It started with communication and now we have online banking and stores, etc. I feel though that if they were to start this online coupon business, they would need to keep regular coupons availiable to those that are old fashioned or those that can not use or don't have a computer. They should at least keep them until the population beings to decrease in using paper coupons. It will eventually filter, then we can get rid of all the coupons as we know it today. Society is changing and this just proves it. We are heading into a new era of technology. It's kind of exciting.
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