Normally I’d have been impatient and irritated. But tonight curiosity got the better of me as I stood waiting in the grocery store checkout line behind a woman with the biggest stack of coupons I’d ever seen. Yes, I’m an admitted geek when it comes to observing consumer behavior (most of us in marketing are), but tonight I wasn’t the only one watching. See this woman was making it clear to all those around her that she was getting her entire cart of groceries for under $15.
And you know what…she did. Nine bags of groceries for just over $13 bucks. And people around her cheered her on. Me included. Then I checked out, without a coupon to my name, and walked out with my $100+ in groceries in 5 bags feeling kind of stupid. And maybe a bit irresponsible.
As I was putting away my groceries, I kept thinking about the coupon lady. I know who she is because her daughter goes to school with mine. She’s probably in the same income bracket as me. Which made me wonder if coupon use was up among all income brackets or just some. Turns out data from Nielsen published last month underscored the growing usage trend among higher incomes, showing that households earning $70,000 or more a year were among the top coupon users.
Which of course made me wonder if I should take a more active role in trying to save money. However, I hate clipping coupons. Really hate it. And on the rare occasion when I do take the time to clip, I don’t sort them and don’t end up using them anyway. (All of this was running through my head while I unpacked the cans and stacked them in my pantry.)
Then as I sat down a few minutes ago to glance through the paper, I see an article about this very subject headlined: “Great time for U.S. consumers; Bargains are the ‘new normal’.” Jeezzz. OK. Maybe I need to pay attention and actually do something. Other than sigh when I read, “there is a new societal pressure to be careful and smart when buying almost anything.”
No kidding. Everywhere I turn tonight, I feel like someone is trying to tell me I need to be smarter with my money. I have thought more about “should” tonight than I ever have. But I’m not a filer. I lack the discipline for organized grocery lists. And most coupons are paper that require organization. So I’d probably end up with 20 things of deodorant I don’t like and would never use if I started clipping coupons at this point. Simply because it was a good deal.
I’m amazed that paper coupons still rule. Because they are so cumbersome. But they do. In fact in the first half of this year there was a 29 percent increase in coupons distributed for food products, and coupon redemption climbed 23 percent during the same period.
Obviously there are a lot of organized people out there. But maybe a little something else is at play as well, given this insight in a recent New York Times article. “Consumer psychologists posit yet another reason for the popularity of paper coupons: Because it takes more work to acquire them, the people who do so feel they have outsmarted other shoppers.”
Well, I definitely felt outsmarted tonight. And have vowed to do something about it. Obviously there are dozens of coupon web sites, but they still require printing and organizing. Not my thing and I know I wouldn’t stick with it. So instead I signed up for Cellfire, which lets me download coupons to either my Bakers value card or to my cell phone. No organization required and I can still feel smart (or at least smarter) next time I go to the grocery store. Somehow I doubt I’ll best the coupon lady with her cart of stuff for $13, but at least I won’t feel irresponsible anymore.
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