A very interesting report was published about two weeks ago by NCH Marketing Services, a Valassis company. It was titled, “2010 Coupon Facts Report”, and the most important insight it offered was that CPG manufacturers offered $485 billion worth of coupons in 2010. That is a 13.9% increase over the previous year and a 47.4% increase over five years ago.

Clearly grocery and cosmetic shopping have become different ballgames ever since the latter part of 2008. Consumers are more strategic in their shopping due to worries about their pocketbooks. But to dig a little deeper past the obvious recession era trends, I thought it would be interesting to pull out a few of the more prominent points brought up in the report:

• Nearly two thirds of all coupons offered in 2010 were for grocery items – up 8% from the prior year.
• The remaining one third were for health and beauty care products.
• The average coupon face value distributed for HBC products was $1.94 – up 6.6 percent from the prior year.
• Consumers now have a week and a half less time to use coupons, compared to the prior year, due to an overall shortening of offer expiration dates in both the grocery and HBC segments. The average expiration is 10.1 weeks. Read more…

Within the conversation surrounding the evolving effort of processing and analyzing the ever-expanding amount of retail data, there is an interesting new development. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has added a minor in Retail Technology to their offered curriculum. The first of its kind in the country, this program will offer students specialized computer-based courses resulting in greater exposure to the technology that has been transforming the industry over recent years. It will also, the university hopes, allow graduates to practically walk into jobs that utilize this technology – being better prepared than their peers.

The minor will be offered for the first time this coming fall. Assistant Professor of Retail and Consumer Science, Rod Runyan, says of the new minor, Read more…

Walmart is working to expand its market share in India, and it is doing so aggressively. Since Walmart entered the Indian market, the company partnered with Bharti Enterprises to open six wholesale stores to date, with four locations in the state of Punjab alone. As with any initial infiltration of a market, there are barriers to entry in India’s retail market. But then again, this is Walmart we are talking about.

One such barrier is the fact that India has not fully opened its retail market to foreign companies. Last year, after India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) was non-committal on foreign investments in retail, the DIPP invited opinions from large retailers and small shop owners about foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail. And that discussion still continues. Read more…

An article in USA Today reports that as of March 10th, Target will allow customers to take advantage of special mobile-coupon offers on their handsets. In the article, Target.com President Steve Eastman states that Target is one of the first nationwide retailers to start this type of promotion. alqemyiQ is predicting that category managers will need to integrate mobile data analytics into their reporting process and CIOs and their IT departments will need to plan for this huge influx of data that mobile couponing will bring. Read more…