Smartphones Changing How Consumers Shop

According to Deloitte USA, smartphones, used as part of a shopping experience, could impact 17-21 percent of retail sales — a whopping $627-$752 billion. How do retailers reach these consumers? It looks like digital couponing may be the prefered method.

What can redeemable digital coupons tell us that can help with our brick and mortar retailing efforts?  With 110 Million cellphone users in the US and another 11 million in Canada, it’s hard to ignore the role digital coupons might play in POP marketing and sales. Researchers are seeing trends.

It seems consumers enjoy collecting and redeeming digital coupons via their cellphones. Is it the wide availability, ease of redeeming them, or the timing of offering them that increases the usage rate?  Let us know if you’ve discovered success via digital couponing.

As the graphics below reveal, couponing is making a big comeback. Usage has surpassed prerecession levels and many expect coupon redemption to grow fast. Of course, shoppers do turn to coupons when budgets are tight, however if both manufacturers and consumers get hooked on the new digital coupons, the trend may stay with us for the next decade.

The ironic thing was that we were growing steadily as a business going into the recession, but what we’ve found now is we have a new set of users and a learned behaviour. The economic uncertainty hit and we had a rush of additional consumers use the website. What we’re being told and the behaviour that we’re observing is that this is very much a sustained behaviour. It is now hip to be frugal.

Coupons.com CEO Steven Boal from Canadian Grocer.com

A rising percentage of shoppers have their smartphones with them upon entering stores. Most retailers haven’t explored the use of QR code offers and SMS texting offers, however this is one retail trend that you’ll want to research further. Although the hazards of price discounting are there, creative marketers will find ways to leverage the power of coupons without brand damage and cannibalizing future sales.  Mobile Coupons can be tied in with value based pricing, brand promotion, and customer loyalty programs.

Shoppers Eager for Couponing Apps

According to s survey by PriceGrabber, 31% of consumers have shopping-related apps installed on their smartphones.  82% of those consumers plan to use those apps when shopping for holidays gifts.

Temporary Cardboard Displays

Corrugate paper or corrugate cardboard displays possess some compelling advantages for POP campaigns. First of all, they’re much cheaper to produce than fixed displays that incorporate steel, wood, and glass. The cost of transporting cardboard displays is much less and instore assembly is much. Beyond those obvious benefits are the ability to do short run POP campaigns where you can test campaign and packaging variables such as colours, display styles and shapes, along with calls to action.  Fixed displays require exceptional planning and provide little feedback on performance. They really are old school.

What makes great display design? Is it just graphics, or is the packaging structure the element that communicates the brand’s value proposition?

How do you improve brand value in your packaging? High visibility packaging is one way. Plastic clamshells, shrinkwrap, and blister packs are being used more frequently. Another key improvement technique is through improved graphic design. Packaging is branding so improvements