HOW COUPONS ARE CASHED IN

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 8, 1992                   TAG: 9201070194
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By Los Angeles Daily News
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES                                LENGTH: Short
HOW COUPONS ARE CASHED IN
The process of coupon redemption can be fairly complicated.
After shoppers hand over coupons to supermarkets, the groceries send them to retail clearinghouses. These companies sort them by manufacturer and send them to manufacturers' agents who are hired to keep track of the coupons.
The agents then check the batch for suspicious coupons - like a stack of 1,000 coupons all lined up perfectly.
"We know consumers didn't cut them," said Marjorie Guilford, a spokeswoman for Carolina Manufacturer's Service Inc. of Winston-Salem, N.C., the largest manufacturers' agent in the country.
Every week, CMS logs 55 million coupons, which are tabulated by offer codes - the four- to six-digit numbers found at the lower right hand corner of a coupon that indicates when and where it was distributed.
The marketing data is given to clients, who can pinpoint which coupons were most effective at what region and how long it took to redeem them. Guilford said they found one coupon that was 35 years old.
The agent cuts a check to the clearinghouse. The supermarket also gets an 8 cent per coupon credit for expenses incurred.
The clearinghouse then pays the supermarket. The manufacturers' agent bills the manufacturers for the amount on the check, plus a fee. The whole process takes 60 days, Guilford said.
Slightly more than half of all the coupons issued in 1990 had an average life of three to five months, Guilford said. Manufacturers want to allow consumers enough time to use the coupon but not wait too long, hence the expiration date.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB