Convenience Store Coupons For Your Mobile Phone

Why has the affiliate couponing industry abandoned convenience store coupons in the c-store industry? If you dig deeper into the any affiliate coupon program (retailmenot.com, coupon.com) you will find that there are not many if any coupons for convenience stores. It seems like there is a disconnect between the coupon affiliates and the c-store industry. If you consider how much money is at stake it does not make any sense. $1 out of every $24 dollars spent in this country is in a convenience store. So has the coupon affiliates abandoned convenience channel?

I think one of the problems is the sheer number of c-stores. There are 154,195 convenience stores in the U.S. as of December, 2015 (NACS/Nielsen) and the site count keeps growing every year. Another possible problem could be the fragmentation of the industry. There are many regional players and only a handful of national players. Another problem is probably the speed of the transaction. We have all been in line at the grocery store and had that lady in front of us pulling a bunch of coupons out of her little pouch bag which simply slows down the transaction time at the register. That is not good for the convenience site. The average time it takes for someone to get in and out with a purchase at a convenience store is 3 minutes and 33 seconds (NACS). However, with the advent of the smartphone it becomes a lot easier to use a coupon. Digital couponing is basically changing the way we save money at the c-store. The usage trend of all retail store coupons is definitely in an upward trajectory and it doesn't look like it is going to slow down any time soon. Convenience stores account for 34.2% of all retail outlets in the United States (NACS). There is no other U.S. retail channel that is such an important part of virtually every community in the country and that is reflected in the overall dollar sales of the industry at $696.1 billion. Those sales represent about 4.1% of the entire estimated $17.7 trillion U.S. gross domestic product.

There is a marriage of sorts going on with convenience store coupons and the smart phone. It is estimated that upwards of 5% of sales transactions within the store will include a digital coupon of some sort by the year 2019 (Gasbuddy.com). It is predicted that there will be around 1.05 billion global mobile coupon users in the world by 2019. With the ease of use the GPS location features on the phones and push technology getting better by the day it is no wonder why convenience store coupons usage on your smart phone is on the rise. Digital coupon redemption is roughly 10% right now. While the old fashion print or paper coupons have a redemption rate of 1% or less. 90% of digital coupon users redeem their coupons within just a few days of receiving them on their phones. One would think that the redemption speed will only increase for the convenience customer and redeem them sooner. It's all about speed of the transaction in this retail space.  For more information visit the site Convenience Store Coupons.

Will The Smartphone Bridge the Gap for Convenience Store Couponing

​To say that the business of couponing is big is an understatement. According to the Association of Coupon Professionals, $3.39 billion in coupons were redeemed or three billion individual redemptions of the total 310 billion coupons issued.

So how many coupons did your stores take in last year? If you said, “not many,” then you’re not alone. The majority — nearly 90% — of coupons are paper based and distributed by freestanding inserts (FSI) in newspapers and magazines, and the overwhelming majority of the redemptions take place in the grocery or chain drug channels.

So why doesn’t our industry attract these valuable sales drivers? Why don’t we target the many customers who regularly use coupons? The answer lies both in consumer psychology as well as limitations in enabling technologies.

Consumers are far less willing to use convenience store coupons than at a grocery store, and I think it is safe to say that consumers do not generally think of convenience stores as having low prices, so value seekers do not do an inordinate amount of shopping with us.

Not surprisingly, the number-one reason a customer shops at a convenience store is, in fact, convenience. This brings up the second consumer hurdle: When you are in a hurry and looking to get in and out of a store quickly, how likely are you to want to hassle with paper coupons?

As if these challenges weren’t enough, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies do not often develop deals with the convenience store shopper in mind. Part of the reason is our industry’s historical lack of coupon enabling technologies. Couponing is an industry with its fair share of waste, fraud and abuse, and our industry represents a higher than normal amount of risk for CPGs.

For example, in the grocery and chain drug channels, the majority of the point-of-sale (POS) systems are equipped to properly process coupons per the coupon issuer’s rules — a capability virtually non-existent in our channel. In our stores, more than likely the cashier would have to manually run a presented coupon and physically read the coupon and make all the proper decisions of acceptance, such as expiration date, qualifying products being purchased, etc. This leaves room for inaccuracies, which understandably are not something the issuing CPG companies are thrilled about. So to some extent, technology has been holding us back. Yet ironically, it may be technology that allows us greater participation in the future.  more

Convenience Stores Showing Largest Mobile Coupon Growth

Mobile coupons just may push out paper coupon clipping the way onlne medai has affected print newspaper. An industry report found that consumers spend more and are more apt to adopt new technologies when offered a mobile coupon. Overall, 43% of mobile users have used a mobile coupon and 26% increase their basket size when using one. A personalized coupon motivates 39% to spend more and 60% would adopt mobile payments if offered coupons.

This report focuses on convenience stores which are showing some of the largest growth in all of retail. The highest redeeming categories are energy drinks (43%), soda (17%) and juice (15%) while free offers had, unsurprisingly, the highest redemption rate (15%) followed by BOGO (7%) and money-off (3%). Interestingly, 65% of consumers redeemed a mobile coupon within 5 minutes of seeing it. In the case of convenience store coupons, the evening commuter period were found to be the most responsive time for mobile coupons. This finding highlights the importance of targeting coupons at the right time, and when the target audience are in the right place. The retailer can now target a specific promotion in a specfic day part such as a coffee promo for morning or hot dog promo for lunch.

Could Convenience Store Coupons be Delivered to your Car?

Visa and Honda created the app, which can be accessed through the car's dashboard. The app lets the driver know when the vehicle is low on gas and navigates them to the nearest location to fill up or maybe even deliver convenience store coupons or deals from the store right to the car. When the vehicle is parked next to the pump, the app can calculate the cost of the fill up and the driver can pay for the gas, as well as in-store items, via their dashboard.

CNBC writes that Visa and many other companies are “betting big on the potential of the connected car,” noting that in four years there will be an estimated quarter of a billion connected vehicles on the road.

"The notion of transforming a car into a platform for payments is not as far off as some may think, and we have made a great deal of progress since first introducing the idea one year ago," said Jim McCarthy, executive vice president of innovation and strategic partnerships at Visa, in a press release. "Working with Honda to test these prototypes gets us another step closer toward commercial reality, which we think provides exciting opportunities to everyone who plays a role in the payments and automotive ecosystems."

Trend of Convenience Store Coupons

The usage trend of convenience store coupons is definitely in an upward trajectory and it doesn’t look like it is going to slow down any time soon. Convenience stores account for 34.2% of all retail outlets in the United States. The U.S convenience store count increased to 154,195 stores as of December 31, 2015, a 0.9% increase (1,401 stores) from the prior year, according to the 2016 NACS/Nielsen convenience industry store count. The industry has roughly doubled in size over the last three decades. Not only is industry growing in site counts and convenience store coupon redemptions but dollars as well.

The convenience store industry had record in-store sales of $213.5 billion in 2014. If you combine that with motor fuel sales of $482.6 billion the overall U.S. convenience store industry sales for 2014 totaled $696.1 billion dollars. Those sales represent about 4.1% of the entire estimated $17.7 trillion U.S. gross domestic product. $1 out of every $24 dollars spent is in a convenience store. There is a marriage of sorts going on with convenience store coupons and the smart phone.

It is estimated that by the 2019 there will be around 1.05 billion global mobile coupon users. With the ease of use and push technology getting better by the day it is no wonder why convenience store coupons on your smart phone usage is on the rise. Digital coupon redemption is roughly 10% right now. While the old fashion print or paper coupons have a redemption rate of 1% or less. 90% of digital coupon users redeem their coupons within just a few days. One would think that the convenience store coupon user would redeem it even sooner.