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.

“In 2010, consumers saved $3.7 billion by using CPG coupons,” said NCH Vice President of Marketing Charlie Brown. “With so much money at stake, brand manufacturers and fast-moving consumer goods retailers must ensure their expenditures are protected while continuing to collaborate for the most effective use of coupon promotions to meet strong consumer demand.” However, with so much money at stake, the proliferation of coupon offers and coupon offers being capitalized upon can be a blessing or a curse for your organization. In one sense, such greatly expanded coupon use adds an inordinate amount of new data and segmentations to be analyzed. But it is only inordinate if your tools are not robust enough. When bearing an adequate data analysis platform, a report like this is only music to analysts’ ears. Coupons are initially segmented to an extent by their very nature.

            Similar to many lifestyle adjustments brought on by the last few years, coupon-influenced consuming does not seem to be going anywhere soon:

• Among those consumers who reported using more coupons than the prior year, the largest share in 2009, 37.4 percent, explained their reason for doing was so to stretch a limited grocery budget out of necessity.
• Once consumers adopt these frugal habits, they quickly discover that they like the feeling of saving money. Acceptance of these new habits can be seen in the largest share of response for increased coupon usage in the 2010 survey — 29.3 percent of consumers stated they are using more coupons for the enjoyment of saving, an increase of 11.7 share points over those stating that reason the prior year.
• Nearly three quarters of those who made such shopping changes expect to continue their frugal habits in the future, even as the economy improves.

Coupon distribution and usage is yet another indicator of the concept people have been constantly redefining as a sort of “new normal” for some time now. And just like the increase of raw data production every year, the proliferation of this kind of data will require a conscientious effort on the part of every member of your organization for maximum value extraction, and for profit.