Lean times call for better marketing…
In Lean Times, Online Coupons Are Catching On
The article talks about how different sites are gathering coupon codes for discounts to various retailers. While in the beginning retailers had been suing these sites for taking away business those times have changed. During these bad economic times the retailers are providing these sites the codes in order to boost business. These retail stores are simply just utilizing these sites as their next marketing platforms.
See there used to be the yellow pages. Companies and retailers would take a space in the yellow pages to grab some advertising. Then that moved to the newspaper ads. Soon the television and postal services were used announce the latest deals. Problem was these platforms of marketing became flooded and inundated with information causing the whole platform to turn into a mess of white noise. As retail marketing continues to look for the next outlet to differentiate itself, email and the internet becomes the new gateway. These websites like RetailMeNot.com, FatWallet.com and the Budget Fashionista all are just the latest way off marketing and attempting to differentiate from the other inundated sources of advertisements.
The cool thing about these sites is that you can narrow your search, instead of having to course through irrelevant ads. For instance, the many ads in each TV commercial break. You feel that you can narrow your search to your interests and select the best saving option. Therfore you feel like a smart consumer and that you made out better than the next person. Meanwhile, these list of coupons and codes are provided to the website by retailers. They know that these codes will have many positive effects for them:
- Get you looking at the website
- Possibly find additional items to buy
- Or buy multiple items because they are in fact on sale
- Plus these Coupon codes are already built into the price tag
Bottom line, I think you can save on some different items, but the retailers with get the better end of the deal, while making you think your outsmarted them.
