COUPONITIS

In an exit-poll survey, 10,000 shoppers in fifty states were asked, "Why did you buy that item here?" Of their responses, "selection" ranked fourth, after third-ranked "service." Only 14 percent said price was most important; it ranked ninth overall. The second most important answer was "quality."

At the top of the list, ranked as the most frequently cited reason for buying from a particular store, was "confidence." They felt confident that their needs would be met and the dealer would stand behind its products. Successful businesspeople do everything they can to communicate their own absolute confidence in their company, their offering, and themselves. That confidence spreads to prospects and customers.

(From the book, Guerrilla Selling, by Levinson, Gallagher and Wilson, 1992)

Some advertisers use coupons almost exclusively as their business promotion which to them allows the counting of coupons for assurance that the money spent came back in sales. In the long term, this unfortunately has a side effect called ÒcouponitisÓ ø the boom or bust inability of a business to attract customers without coupons.

Coupons themselves attract what we at Coffee News call ÒCÓ buyers ø bargain-hunters who will only buy products or services on Òdeep discountÓ and whose loyalty to any store is entirely dependent on what everyone else is offering. Such buyers are good to have to clear out last year's merchandise, but the more coupons are used, the more such buyers will expect and WAIT for coupons before buying ø thus the supposed business boom from coupons, with the dead time in between. Coupons do not appeal to the types of buyers who buy at retail and may actually scare them away thinking the business offers poor quality merchandise that isn't worth the retail price. As such, the advertiser is little by little forced to cater to the bargain-hunters and keep up his or her sales at give-away prices while making a meager margin on the bulk being sold.

How Coffee News Can Help

Coffee News breaks this cycle by appealing to those who will buy at retail prices and promoting quality, service, etc., as opposed to price, thus establishing customer confidence.

A business affected with "couponitis" which instead begins to advertise quality, service, etc., will slowly but surely see the type of customer he gets begin to change, the boom and bust will even out, and the do-or-die deep discounts he had to offer will be able to slowly return to reason without losing sales volume. After a year or more in Coffee News, he will no longer have all his customers desert the store to take advantage of his competitor's cut-rate offerings.