[mpayne]

What do you all think about this?

Clever grocery-store coupon strategy

Posted by Cory Doctorow, January 23, 2008 10:03 PM |



Here's a clever strategy for grocery-store coupons from The Simple Dollar: sit on your coupons for a month, then spend them. Coupons are often the leading edge of product promotion, which features progressively deeper savings. By waiting a month, you can apply your coupons to an already discounted price. Food prices are up -- do something about it.

He gave me a tip: he said to take the coupon section out of the Sunday paper and put it aside for four weeks - don’t even bother to look at it. Four weeks later, open it up and clip everything that’s even remotely of interest, whether you’d buy it normally or not.

At that point, take the wad of coupons to the store and just look at the shelves. Magically, most of those coupons you have will sync up very well with stuff that’s already on sale on the shelves. When you combine the sale price and the coupon, you’ll usually be able to get items for next to nothing.


Why does this work? Coupons in the newspaper are usually the first wave of a product push from large companies. They’ll put out coupons to start bumping up the sales, then they’ll move onto sale prices later on in the promotion. The reason for doing these in waves is so that the overall product sales trend looks solidly positive and not just a big spike with a fall-off. Plus, coupon users who use the product, like it, return to the store, and notice the item on sale are often willing to buy the item again. I’ll admit to noticing this working for me in the past with products like V-8 Fusion.

[Nerthy]

That's good.

I only buy something if a REALLY need it and if I have a coupon for it. (I normally don't buy something if I don't have a coupon, unless it's an emergency and it can't wait.) But I NEVER buy something just because I have a coupon for it, even if it would be nice to have the item. I wait till I need the item or if the item goes on sale and the final oop would be really low.

[Faith]

Just be careful that the coupons don't expire when you're not paying attention. The P&G coupons are generally only good for a month.

[JRA191]

sometimes that's true and sometimes not.I've been doing this awhile and have noticed trends.I've also been doing it long enough to know one week the coupon might be .75/1 and then the next the same coupon is .55/2.
I also know when I get a coupon for 1.00/2 I usually can find it elsewhere for 1.00/1 or can find blinkies from someone for better cents off.

What about walgreens,cvs, and riteaid and their bucks back and rebates too.walgreens will have a good sale price,say look for more additional saving in this weeks paper, and even offer bucks back catalinas that week.

Okay strategy...sometimes.Plus I really think the person was really talking about new products and promotions,but I would never just let the inserts sit there without looking first.