Coupons, Mobile, And The Path To Purchase

Author:

Jeff Weidauer

Source:

Last October, media marketing firm Greystripe released a study of working moms who use their iPhones for everything from banking to social networking to making purchases. Dubbed the "iPhone Mom," this audience segment depends on the iPhone for managing their lives to entertaining their children. Just over half use their iPhones at the supermarket, according to the study.
 
Of this very active group, only 19% are downloading coupons, trailing by half those who use it to track their shopping list (41.9%) and those who comparison shop with it (39.4%). This survey was taken late in 2009 when the economy was even less stable than today; one would expect coupons would be high on the list of activities for dedicated iPhone users.
 
There is a lesson here for marketers: Using the latest technology to deliver old-school promotions isn't going to work. Even with the growth of coupons in general over the past couple of years, and the plethora of providers for mobile coupons, this combination has yet to make any real headway. There are a number of reasons for this lack of engagement from shoppers.
 
First, coupons themselves are not the most effective way to drive sales. Much like lowering prices, they are just another method of temporarily "buying" sales, doing little to drive loyalty. Secondly, there is a more practical concern -- the delivery of the coupon itself. To date, most mobile coupons place a barcode on the screen of the mobile device.
 
What happens if I want to redeem three or five of these? Sounds complicated...
 
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