Americans now live in a veritable blizzard of consumer coupons: 310 billion are printed each year.
But the coupon revolution is hardly new.
It all started 100 years ago. That's when pharmacist Asa Candler offered a 5-cent-off coupon worth a free glass of Coca-Cola at his Atlanta soda fountain.
Coke and Grapenuts cereal are among numerous products that have hurtled into national prominence on the power of coupons, says Jan Leasure, a coupon author and columnist.
"Looking back a century, coupons have proved an enormously successful consumer promotion," Ms. Leasure says. "The advantage of coupons is that they give products high visibility. A total of 6.2 billion coupons were redeemed in 1994 -- more than three times the number in 1974."
More than 70 percent of Americans use coupons -- on a widening array of products and services that now include doctors' visits, prescription drugs, even gravesites, she notes.
Baltimore residents are in the "high average" group on coupon use, but don't rank with the nation's top couponers. Boston, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Syracuse take the honors for couponing most, says the Promotion Marketing Association of America Inc., the trade group.
Still, Maryland is the home of a major coupon-related company.
First Fulfillment and Management Co. Inc., of Easton, designs coupons for manufacturers. It's a major factor in the "sweepstakes" field. And it does a huge business mailing out "premiums" sought through mail-in rebate offers.
Companies that use refund coupons are now developing a huge data base of information on consumer preferences, says Tom Wright, president and chief executive of First Fulfillment. If you redeem a rebate offer for diapers, for instance, you're now likely to get mail for all sorts of baby products.
"The trend in couponing is to target individual consumers," Mr. Wright says. "You don't want to try to sell dog food to someone with a cat."
Free-standing inserts, the colorful coupon booklets inserted in Sunday newspapers, have become so popular that many coupon hoarders now buy several such papers each week, says Lynn Liddle, a vice president at Valassis Communications, a Detroit-based coupon giant.
Different reasons
Manufacturers use coupons for different reasons -- to advertise, change brand preferences or promote new products. Sometimes, coupons for a new product, perhaps a cookie or cereal, will be targeted to just a few test cities.
