As the economy recesses, “Coupon Economy” has become a trend amongst shoppers. A new term, “Extreme-Couponing“, was created, and refers to people who would not consume unless they can get discounts or bonuses from their collection of coupons. This action, however, alarmed the businesses that they might be throwing away money and receive no return from these coupon hunters. The creation of group purchase sites like Groupon and coupon-sharing websites like RetailMeNot did not help the cause either.

Coupons used to encourage customer loyalty, but with these extreme couponers, it is practically impossible to gain any profit. The exploitation of the coupon forced the businesses to rethink their approach in order to establish customer loyalty. In this internet era, it is easy for consumers to share and spread the “love for coupons”, therefore businesses would definitely need to change their marketing strategy to avoid low-yield customers.

This showed that in the field of business, there is no permanent, golden rule or tactic that will apply universally and forever. However, the age of coupon is not over yet. The key is to fully evaluate the customers, create a formula to encourage spending with coupons, and ride the trend to the top.