ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 8, 1997 TAG: 9701080010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN JAMES MARTIN THE BALTIMORE SUN
Americans now live in a veritable blizzard of consumer coupons: Roughly 310 billion are printed each year.
But the coupon revolution is hardly new.
It all started more than 100 years ago, when pharmacist Asa Candler offered a 5-cent-off coupon worth a free glass of Coca-Cola at his Atlanta soda fountain.
Coke and Grapenuts cereal are among numerous products that have hurtled into national prominence on the power of coupons, says Jan Leasure, a coupon-book author and columnist.
``Looking back a century, coupons have proved an enormously successful consumer promotion,'' Leasure says. ``The advantage of coupons is that they give products high visibility. A total of 6.2 billion coupons were redeemed in 1994 - more than three times the number in 1974.''
More than 70 percent of Americans use coupons - on a widening array of products and services that now include doctors' visits, prescription drugs, even gravesites, she notes.
Although used as early as 1895, coupons didn't become a staple of everyday life until the Great Depression of the 1930s, when penny-pinching was a necessity for many.
Through much of their 100-plus-year history, coupons were available only for packaged, canned, bottled or frozen edibles. Then there were coupons on health and beauty products. Fast-food purveyors got into the act in the mid-1980s.
More recently, coupons have appeared on over-the-counter drugs, such as antacids, and new prescription products. They also have showed up for professional services, such as visits to a lawyer's office.
Of course, it's not the retailers but the manufacturers who ``pay back'' consumers through coupons. Supermarket chains typically receive 7 cents to 10 cents per coupon as a ``handling fee'' for each coupon accepted, Leasure says.
Double coupons are a factor in competitive markets, but in areas where competition is less fierce, stores offer double-coupon deals far less frequently.
Consumers who use coupons save $4.8 billion each year, and those who don't pass them up leave money on the table.
Still, Leasure cautions consumers against using coupons for any purchase they might otherwise not make. She advises consumers to amass coupons only for products they regularly use and organize the coupons by aisles in the supermarket. And always use them with a sharp eye to ``comparison shopping.''
She calculates that coupons can save the average family of four $650 a year. That's a payback of about $15 to $16 an hour for the time it takes to assemble and organize the coupons, she says.
Sources of coupons continue to multiply. Coupons generated electronically at the cash register are popular across the country because they mirror consumer preferences. So are coupons passed out to shoppers (with or without food samples). And, coupons come via direct mail.
In the information age, it was inevitable that the personal computer would get into the act. And, sure enough, food-makers now have home pages on the World Wide Web where consumers can print their own coupons (subject to the same limits as other coupons).
But coupons also expire faster than before, because manufacturers want faster feedback on product use for their new databases.
Will electronic transmission of coupons, allowing consumers to trigger their own coupons when they watch TV commercials on cable, one day play a major role? Which sorts of coupons will prevail in the future?
The market will decide what works.
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