Coupons are going at a fast clip

Coupon use, on the decline since 1992, appears to be on the way up as shoppers look for ways to combat rising prices.

Forget the image of a befuddled shopper fumbling with a jumble of paper scraps just to save a few cents on cat chow. These days, coupons and promotions often are worth more, targeted to specific shoppers and, perhaps coolest of all, tech-friendly and convenient. Some can be loaded onto grocery savings club cards.

Two recent national reports indicate grocery coupon use is on the rise. One shows coupon use stopped declining last year, after a 16-year drop. Another shows consumers, even those younger than 35, are more interested in grocery coupons in the slow economy.

Bashas’ Supermarkets, which has grocery stores in Arizona, said it redeemed 13 percent more manufacturers’ coupons in the first quarter of 2008 than in the last quarter of 2007.

Bashas’ shopper Debbie Farmer, 52, of Queen Creek, Ariz., said she saves at least $20 a week by using coupons.

“I have gotten so I use coupons for everything,” Farmer said. “Prices have gone up on everything.”

Grocery store chains Albertsons, Fry’s Food Stores and Safeway also said they have observed more coupon use, but did not have specific numbers.

Some are handing out more store promotional coupons. Safeway, for instance, is giving away books of coupons worth $40 to shoppers who buy items from the store’s organic foods line and handing out a coupon for $10 off a shopper’s next bill to shoppers that buy $30 worth of selected items.

Coupon use typically rises as the economy slows, said Matthew Tilley, director of marketing for Winston-Salem, N.C-based CMS, which reported the information about the halt to declining coupon use. CMS is a coupon-processing agent for grocery brands.

The last boom in coupon use was during the tough economic times of the early 1990s, Tilley said.

In 2007, shoppers redeemed 2.6 billion grocery manufacturer coupons, he said. But shoppers could have done much better. Manufacturers distributed 302 billion coupons, worth an average of $1.28 each. Coupon values also increased an average of 10 cents last year, he said.

Overall coupon distribution was up 6 percent in 2007 and distribution of coupons for non-food products was up nearly 13 percent, Tilley said. Non-food coupons also increased in face value by about 7 percent, compared to the 5 percent increase in food coupon values.