But why would they? There are enough people apparently willing to pay the full price, or else they’d have dropped it. They only want to drop that price to make an extra sale that they otherwise wouldn’t have; they want to charge the full price to anyone willing to pay it.
Coupons are specifically intended to do 2 things:
Entice price-sensitive consumers to buy something they otherwise would not have, whether it’s more of a usual thing, some entirely new product, or buying a brand that they otherwise wouldn’t buy.
Be annoying enough to prevent non-price-sensitive or casually price-sensitive consumers from redeeming them, thereby making them pay full price for the item in question.
Exactly. Coupons can save you money if you were going to buy the item anyway. If you weren’t, then they are meaningless. It doesn’t matter how much off I would get with a coupon for Mount Olive brand pickles, because I would never eat them. They are horrible. But should Del Monte put out a coupon, I’m stocking up.
My niece has gotten into extreme couponing lately. She posts her extreme savings experiences on Facebook. I was teasing her yesterday about how her husband must spend all his time building shelves for all the stuff she gets.
She told me that she keeps what she needs and donates the rest to local shelters, foster kid organizations, or food banks. For instance, she managed to buy something like 30 boxes of maxi-pads the other day. She’ll donate the bulk of it to the battered adults shelter.
See, I wouldn’t know that Mount Olive pickles are horrible, except that I stacked some coupons on top of a sale and got a jar for less than a dollar. I won’t buy them again, but at least I didn’t pay full price only to discover that I don’t like them.
And as others have noted: the store brand might have been cheaper even with the coupon difference (unless the brand name happened to be on sale and the store does coupon-doubling).
We don’t bother, really - most of the stuff we see coupons for is either stuff we don’t want, or more expensive even with the coupons.
Now, coupons for events can be worth it. e.g. we saved 10 bucks per ticket to Hersheypark recently, with a coupon picked up at a restaurant near home.
And coupons for x% off a purchase at a department store, for something you wanted anyway, can be worth it. Still won’t make up the price difference between, say, a designer item and a Target knockoff (even at 25% off I paid more for my one Coach purse than for a cheapo from Kohl’s)… but it’s cheaper than paying retail for the identical item.
I’ll do better than that - I’m pretty close to being openly hostile to coupons because of how it slows down the checkouts.
I’m standing there with a whole bunch of frozen foods on the belt while some thumbhead is arguing with the cashier about a coupon that could save him an extra 50 cents. Then they have to get the manager there to override the register, and we’re all standing around wasting time and the lines get longer and longer.
Look, I’m sympathetic to wanting to get as much bang for your buck as possible. But it can really suck to be behind these people in line. That being said, I’m waiting for some store to revolutionize the way we do checkout at supermarkets. The self-checkout lines are an innovation, but we need a totally new approach.
I use coupons and save quite a bit of money. In order for couponing to be most effective, you need to be a strategic shopper, extremely organized and able to plan ahead.
“Processed Food” tends to be used awfully broadly in these threads by coupon opponents. I confess, I don’t make my own mustard, or yogurt, or coffee, or peanut butter, or toothpaste, or Kleenex, and I would probably use those products even without coupons. With coupons, they’re just a bit cheaper.
When I think of processed foods, I tend to think of things like processed cheese (or “cheese foods”), Twinkies, PopTarts, Hot Pockets, things like that. It’s very much a YMMV thing, I think.
My great-uncle was a super couponer- he often left a store with the receipt showing a negative balance on triple coupon days in Houston, TX.
They had a huge extended family, and nearly any product could find a use somewhere- but I don’t think he ever spent more than $5 on any single store run…
I just can’t handle it. I prefer to stuff my head with trivia that I find interesting, and I will pay full price for things…
This is the key point. The general idea is far more widespread than just grocery coupons. Many businesses will give a discount, but only if you ask for it. Airlines used to charge extra if you didn’t spend the weekend at your destination, even though it obviously has no effect on their cost; they get more money from people too busy to “waste” a weekend. I know of a luxury hotel that gives a cheap Internet price, but subjects those guests to certain indignities that save the hotel little if any money.
I’m seldom taken advantage of coupons. I used to be a rather frequent flier, yet never used a single frequent-flier mile. :mad: The one or two times I tried to the upgrade or flight I wanted was unavailable.
The 7-Elevens where I live often give stamps. Sometimes I trade them in immediately for a pack of gum or something. (You have to do this in a 2nd transaction.) My daughter insisted I instead give the stamps to her so she can save them for a special gift. Given the distance to the 7-Elevens and that they need to order the gifts, we’ve wasted as much in fuel as the gift values. :smack:
I can’t find coupons (admittedly, I don’t try very hard anymore) that are actually for stuff I would use and present a significant discount over my regular brand.
Take peanut butter, for example. Let’s say I come across a $0.50 off coupon for 1 jar of Jif. I love me some Jif. Choose mothers choose Jif, right? Then, *IF *I can manage to remember to grab my coupon next time I’m at the store (terrible planner; I have trouble remembering my own reusable grocery bags), I will discover that the Jif, with the coupon, is still like $1 more than my grocery store brand. Same with paper towels, paper plates, most canned and frozen veggies. Normally, I might spend $35 at the store. With coupons, I might spend $50, but still have a $5 savings. Great, I went over budget by $10 because I tried to save money with coupons. (face palm)
I do take advantage of my store’s BOGO deals. They toss loss leaders in big bins right inside the front door and those can sometimes be a really great deal, if I happen to already use the product. For the most part, I shop the perimeter of the store and don’t eat anything that comes in a can or a box, with just a few exceptions. The only things I go into the middle aisles for are paper and cleaning products. I have noticed that there are never coupons for perishables/things found only on the perimeter of the store.
This is a source of great criticism from my stepmonster. She’s a super couponer and totally aghast that I waste so much money paying full price for groceries. “I don’t eat meat and I don’t eat canned foods. So that Dinty Moore Beef Stew coupon for $1 off really doesn’t do shit for me. It’s not a great deal if I don’t want it.” Also, where she lives the stores often give double and triple credit for coupons. That’s where they would work for me, but my stores don’t do that here.
The grocery store that my husband prefers likes to do this, too. Sometimes it’s something that I can actually use, but most of it is cheap junk. Then they decided to go to games…the Monopoly game. My husband used to collect the stupid pieces, but we never really got anything worth having with the games. I’d prefer to shop elsewhere, but he insists that he likes this particular store the best.
Mail in rebates are in essence a delayed coupon, with the possible advantage to the company that even if you’re interested, you’ll forget to fill out the form, fill it out wrong, forget to cash your $5 check 90 days later, or any of the myriad other things that may get in the way of you actually cashing in your rebate check.
And Dogzilla, you’re a perfect example of a price-sensitive consumer. You’re buying things almost strictly based on price, so unless the coupon actually causes you to break even or save vs. the value brand, you’re not going to bother.
I’d wager that if there were coupons that made your customary brands 20% cheaper, you’d make sure and go through the trouble to clip and use them.
There are people out there who have brand preferences for everything, and buy their brands no matter what. Most people are a sort of mix- some items are one and only one brand, some items are in a certain range of brands, and some items are bought strictly on cost.
For example, I won’t spend any more than I have to on sugar. Having been to the Imperial Sugar mill as a kid and seeing all the house brand sugar packaging in the packaging plant, I’m sure that there’s no difference between name-brand sugar and house brand sugar.
I pretty much only buy Hunt’s ketchup, regardless of price.
I buy whichever of Pepsi, Coke or Dr. Pepper products is on sale, but rarely venture into house brand versions, unless they’re actually superior (Kroger’s Big K Diet Cherry Cola & Diet Citrus Drop are great!)
You are correct on both counts. Mostly, I was amused at my stepmonster’s neverending penny pinching. She should be a perfect example of a price-sensitive consumer; however, she is apparently mathematically challenged. Same woman will drive 40 miles out of her way to save $0.03 per gallon for a 12-gallon tank of gas. I haven’t dug deeply enough into the math to calculate her mileage and gas spent against what she’s “saving”, but I’m pretty sure that trip to the next county is probably not worth the whopping $0.36. I’m thinking just about any nonhybrid vehicle is going to use more than $0.36 worth of gas in 40 miles. She’ll brag to me because she “saved” so much more than I did on her 40-minute errand; but I only drove 1/4 mile (maybe 5 minutes with traffic and stoplights) and spent $0.36 more than she did. :rolleyes:
The reason I think this couponing thing works is because many people either do not understand (or even bother doing) the math, or because they also cannot be bothered to factor in soft costs (time, energy, effort). All I’m really saying is that both my stepmom and I are fierce bargain-hunters, but her idea of a bargain and mine are two totally different things. That’s why I think some people take it personally if you do/don’t use coupons. If someone doesn’t do something you think is brilliant and they lay out really sound, logical reasons for that choice, well, you kind of look like an idiot who can’t add their way out of a paper bag, don’t you? Therefore, my stepmonster must preach to me how wasteful I am or else she has hard proof she’s been wasting her time to spend more money.
I’ve done a little couponing over the years…generally its too much bother but…
People who do it well work a system. They buy items on sale with a coupon on double coupon days. This doesn’t work in every part of the country (some parts don’t offer double coupons), but it can work and work pretty well.
As someone said “processed foods” is a broad brush - there are usually coupons for toothpaste, yogurt, cereal, orange juice, laundry detergent, cleaning supplies, etc.
Generics ARE often cheaper, but generally not cheaper once you’ve started “working the system” - when cereal is 10 for 5 boxes, you have a coupon for the cereal for .50 off a box and five of those coupons, and they are doubling coupons, and the store has a “free milk when you buy five boxes of cereal” deal going as well - its hard to beat. And brand name quality is often better - not always, but often.
Its also hard to coupon if you are big into organics/local/low impact/etc. Not many coupons out there to start with, and you aren’t eating a lot of processed food.
There are also extreme couponers and people who save $5 a week on their grocery bill. But $5 is $5.
I don’t use coupons very often, but I will admit to carrying around a small book that includes places for me to write my shopping list and little pouches to store and organize coupons. I generally use a coupon if I’m buying something like toothpaste, tampons, pasta, crackers, etc. If I’m at Costco I’ll often use a coupon to buy cleaning supplies. The only reason I have the book is that I’m otherwise terrible about remembering coupons, so I have to have them with me and organized in advance or I don’t use them.
We eat mostly fresh food, so my coupon use rarely saves me more than about $.75 - $5.00 savings a trip, so I don’t stress about it if I forget my book. But it is satisfying when I don’t have to pay full price. I think that’s part of extreme couponing. I imagine that, especially if you’re buying $600 worth of stuff and only pay $25, you’d feel fairly proud of yourself. What you’d do with all the freaking food, hygiene items and cleaning supplies I have no idea, especially if you kept them all for yourself.
While I don’t dispute the first part - that coupon-driven food shopping is essentially letting your menu be dictated by the excess inventory of “agribusiness corporations” - I do question the second part. Leaving aside the coupons for non-food items like shampoo or detergent, it’s always been my observation that “fresh raw foods” are always more expensive than the processed equivalent. One of the reasons often cited for higher rates of obesity in many inner city neighborhoods is the lack of availability of fresh food, coupled with the much cheaper cost of eating processed food (especially with coupons).
Any way I look at it from my own experience fresh food is more expensive (but also worth it - not arguing that either). Compare, say, fresh tomatoes or oranges versus tomato paste in a can, or OJ from concentrate. Or fresh meat (even ground beef or Grade A non-organic/free-range chicken) versus processed (Hormel chili, deviled ham, cans of SPAM). Whether measured in dollars per serving or calories per dollar (and NOT factoring in the difference in “nutritional value” which is not equal and has an unknown premium to the consumer), it’s cheaper to get it processed because processed stuff is made - and priced - in bulk.
Even a very, very basic recipe for mac and cheese at typical supermarket costs (using my online grocer, Fresh Direct, as a benchmark):
1 16 oz. box of pasta noodles (e.g., Ronzoni elbows) - $1.79
1 10 oz. bar of Kraft cheddar cheese (Cracker Barrel) - $5.49
That costs $7.28 and makes about 8 servings of mac and cheese.
Clear thinking people not only reason the way you do, but when are presented with evidence that they are doing something stupid, their first instinct is to think: “Well, am I doing something stupid? Because if so I should stop doing it and the sooner the better” - instead of the emotional gut reaction of “Hey, who are you to tell me I’ve been doing something stupid all my life?”
I’ve stopped being surprised how many people are automatically and shamelessly in the second group.
And yes, I think there is an element of a gambler’s high in this scenario also. The “I saved 10%!!!” is such a rush that doing the balance sheet to see if that was more than offset in other ways is a killjoy exercise.
Then, *IF *I can manage to remember to grab my coupon next time I’m at the store (terrible planner; I have trouble remembering my own reusable grocery bags), I will discover that the Jif, with the coupon, is still like $1 more than my grocery store brand. Same with paper towels, paper plates, most canned and frozen veggies. Normally, I might spend $35 at the store. With coupons, I might spend $50, but still have a $5 savings. Great, I went over budget by $10 because I tried to save money with coupons. (face palm)
Therefore, my stepmonster must preach to me how wasteful I am or else she has hard proof she’s been wasting her time to spend more money.