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The kind of people who ran coupon schemes in the pre-internet days could have told you this. Back in the day, coupon schemes were things like you had to physic
by red_admiral 3y ago
The kind of people who ran coupon schemes in the pre-internet days could have told you this.
Back in the day, coupon schemes were things like you had to physically cut out and mail in vouchers from newspapers or magazines, and you got a discount on something like groceries in return. The point of this was market segmentation: you want to get people who (1) otherwise wouldn't buy your product, or at least not as much and (2) without giving it away any cheaper to those who would buy it already. Who goes through the effort to cut out and collect vouchers for a little bit off their weekly shop?
One answer is "poor people". Calling them "much, much worse customers", is a value judgement.
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y agoActually , the one answer you gave, is a common myth[1] https://www.investmentzen.com/news/the-surprising-identity-of-the-average-couponer https://www.investmentzen.com/news/the-surprising-identity-o...
- vdaea 3y agoWhich makes sense to me - more educated people are those who know how to save.
- ghaff 3y agoThere's a difference between being frugal where it actually moves the needle and pinching every penny when the effort/scarifice far exceeds any benefit.
- dylan604 3y agoWhat effort/sacrifice was expelled? Flipping through the paper with a pair of scissors? You didn't even need to buy the paper as the coupons were ignored by the majority of those that did buy the paper and would just toss the coupons. It took no more effort than what people expend doom scrolling the socials.
- ghaff 3y agoPeople "waste" time on lots of things. But, yes, coupon-clipping and redemption is a certain amount of effort and I'm not going to bother unless it hits a fairly high threshold for something I'd have bought anyway.
- ipaddr 3y agoCoupon clipping is not wasting time. Understanding how much you pay finding coupons to reduce that is will save a lot of money. Just the awareness itself will help. Write on here that it's a waste of time is probably the biggest waste of time. At least it's low effort.
- lupusreal 3y agoCouponing is a hobby that is practiced by many people who have secure financial positions but get a thrill out of saving a few dollars on stuff they didn't need to buy in the first place. It happens that these sort of people are often pains in the ass from a retail worker perspective. They try to bend the rules by stacking coupons, using expired coupons, twisting what product the coupons are for, etc. They also waste a lot of time rifling through coupons looking for the best one to use, and just generally waste a lot of time and cause grief for everybody near them. It may not seem like an exciting hobby to you so maybe you think this is made up, but try to remember that there are people who collect stamps or sit around train tracks to see locomotives. One man's absolute bore is another man's nailbiting thrill.
- RicoElectrico 3y agoPolish HN readers laughing at the domain ATM ;)
- remram 3y agoWhy?
- aidenscott2016 3y agoMentzen is a Polish politician
- Retric 3y agoIt fits my experience, the people I knew used coupons frequently where are all low income. One ended up having quite a large savings from compound interest and another got a healthy inheritance, but their jobs paid little.
- szundi 3y agoI am a multimillionaire and love coupons and good value
- booleandilemma 3y agoIn your previous comment you said you wrote "about 1000 games" in your school years. I wonder if that was a lie too? :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39235575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39235575
- ipaddr 3y agoWhy would making 1,000 games (that can be translated to many) that lead to a game startup and successful exit would call you to question if the parent was a millionaire. Successful exits usually are worth millions.
- rand846633 3y agoIf 1,000 games can be translated to many, then multimillionaire can be translated to “at least many thousand dollars in net worth”? The point for criticism of unlikely claims online is that it is hard to know if made up, thereby kinda dubious as an justification for an acclaim of authority on a specific topic..
- antifa 3y agoAnother theory, reversing cause and effect, being a multimillionaire would give you enough free time to write 1000 tiny games.
- geraldwhen 3y ago
- dazc 3y agoThe difference in those days is that people had to present an actual coupon that they had gone to trouble of cutting out and keeping. The advent of search 'business-name voucher code' brought this to anyone and everyone.
- rchaud 3y ago9 out of 10 times, those online coupon finders never worked. You needed to use them pretty much on the day they were posted to the site, otherwise there would be too many redemptions by the time it found it ranked on Google search.
- paulmd 3y agoToday it is pretty much actively a scam and you are better off searching for a newsletter subscription that often come with a 15% off code etc. (I assume the mechanism here is to obscure the coupon enough that Amazon doesn’t get mad you’re selling under their pricing but you let the customer have some of the savings from avoiding Amazon’s commission.)
- FredPret 3y agoAnother answer is “someone who would slog through some effort to get a tiny bit of a better deal” and these people are definitely worse customers, rich or poor.
- electriclove 3y agoWhy the downvotes / disagreement? “People using coupons -> worse customers” makes sense to me. The shop isn’t getting more money from these customers.
- ipaddr 3y agoNot true. A dollar off coupon will encourage purchasing otherwise ignored products. I buy toothpaste. A dollar off coupon will encourage another brand purchase to a more expensive product that may get repeated. The shop may get addition money by having me buy other items to save me the time of multiple store visits. There is a reason why each week a different item goes on sale. That loss leader leads to more purchases
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fireflash38 3y agoBut would you continue to buy it afterwards, or just chase the discounts? Aka:are you truly a "conversion" or just a single discount sale?
- almostnormal 3y agoLured into a physical shop by a voucher they are likely to by things they would have bought elsewhere, the effort to visit another shop not being justified.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoA similar effect happens online with free shipping over a certain dollar amount, which incentivizes getting as many things as you can from a single site.
- ghaff 3y agoAlternatively, free shipping (or free shipping at quite a low threshold for what's being sold) is sufficiently normalized that if shipping is not free, some percentage of users will just close the window and move on.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 3y agoI'm actually sort of curious why, sometimes substantial, mail-in rebates seemingly largely went away? I haven't seen one in years. A significant customer of a former employer processed a lot of these out of Minnesota.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y agoProbably they were introduced as marketing and when more-preferred customers realized they never mailed anything in, and therefore the rebate price is misleading, it ceased to be effective marketing. Sounds like it was also the difficulty around “doing it right” which is probably different per seller. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/rebate_madness01.html https://www.consumeraffairs.com/consumerism/rebate_madness01...
- ghaff 3y agoThough they weren't a flash in the pan thing. It's true that their allure for marketing was that a lot of people priced the rebate in and then never mailed for it or violated some term/condition. But they were commonplace for a long time.
- etrautmann 3y agoSending outgoing mail is more rare now though? Perhaps when it used to be common to stamp and mail letters then one more wasn’t as big a deal. Now, I’m not even sure where our stamps are or if we have any at home.
- ghaff 3y agoYes, as I wrote in another comment. I know where my stamps and envelopes are but I imagine a lot of people are like "I need to fill out a form and mail it? ROFL. Like that's going to happen. Stuff your rebate. That's fake news."
- red_admiral 3y agoThis is a pure guess, but one of the things a buisness would get out of a mail-in rebate scheme is a customer's contact details, for future marketing (or even to sell on to other companies). Of course, along with the information that "this is the kind of customer who takes part in mail-ins". That kind of thing can be done far more cheaply, and far more effectively, online these days.
- treffer 3y agoIt becomes more funny once you shift online. Basically every checkout has a "coupon" field. Now you look for coupons, and some coupon aggregator of doubtful quality pops up. You find something that works. Or give up. Done. The coupon sites are usually of doubtful quality because .... Basically all affiliate networks forbid it. It's also the reason why "last click" attribution is horribly broken. Funnily enough it's now mostly magazins & newspapers that run these coupon sites in Germany.
- legutierr 3y ago> The coupon sites are usually of doubtful quality because .... Basically all affiliate networks forbid it. I wasn’t aware of this, and I’m not sure I understand why this would be the case. Do you have any more information about this?
- anonymouskimmer 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39243992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39243992
- MichaelVangard 3y agoIf you’re asking why a referral program would forbid the listing of referral links on coupon sites, I’d imagine it’s because most people visiting a coupon aggregator are already on the website checkout page ready to make a purchase. You’re not referring these customers and bringing someone new to the table.
- shostack 3y agoI used to run an affiliate program for a company and one of the top affiliates who was making a large sum annually from the program before I took over got quite hostile when I pointed out the bulk of their referrals were from coupon sites. They started trying to intimidate us about the backlash that would ensue if we took action and even brought a very physically intimidating person into a meeting for no other apparent purpose other than to be intimidating. The data was very cut and dry and in blocking coupon sites in our terms as one of the first actions I took in taking it over they lost a very high double digit % of their revenue from the program overnight. Surprise surprise, overall trials and subscription rates didn't change and channel ROI improved significantly. Goodbye Felicia.
- jncfhnb 3y agoMy in laws side of the family still has plenty of grocery coupons active in their area. It’s definitely not a poor person thing. It’s a generational / cultural thing.
- therockspush 3y agoMine are all online now. So you can activate them before you go. In the time it would take to pull the scissors out of the drawer, I can just .click() all of them. I don't even pay attention to the ones I activate anymore, I just get a nice surprise on the receipt. On a $100 grocery run it knocks off an average of $20.
- tetrisgm 3y agoThis is a value judgment. You're assuming the author is scheming an elaborate way to be dismissive of poor people. You just split the entire world of coupon users in 2 arbitrary sections. That's another value judgment. There are many other reasons to use coupons. Such as: I like a good deal. I like to use coupons. I wanna try something new. I am bored and want to cut coupons. I got this coupon book. This place opened and I'm not sure I wanna try it full price. Etc. There are so many ways to explore this question. As for "worse customers", it is entirely possible for a customer to be bad, and for it to have nothing to do with being poor. I recommend studying the user journeys of user cohorts motivated by external rewards, vs those who aren't.
- KorematsuFredt 3y agoAll customers are worse customers in my opinion, and those who seek max value for their bucks are often the worst. But I am always that customer. I harassed my car dealer so much that it took 9 months but he sold me the car for the exact price I have been demanding.
- Spooky23 3y agoPoor people is just one segment. Honestly, I’d say on average poor people are often not very frugal at all.