One of the most important aspects of using supermarket coupons effectively is coupon organization. In this post we will be talking about how to efficiently organize your manufacturer coupons to maximize your savings.
There are all kinds of mehtods for coupon organization. Systems range from free coupon organizers, to file coupon organizers and box coupon organizers. The key is finding a coupon organization system that will work for you.
Methods of Coupon Organization
There really is no “best type” of coupon organization system. What will work best for you is a system that is logical and will help you to quickly locate your manufacturer coupons.
That being said, I wanted to give you some information on how you can make a coupon organizer.
The Envelope Coupon Organizer
The most basic system for organizing coupons is to go to the office supply store and buy a box of #10 envelopes. Create one envelope for each main section in the store.
Advantages: This method is cheap and fast to create and does a respectable job of keeping coupons organized.
Disadvantages: You will have 6 or more envelopes to keep track of and it’s easy to leave one sitting around somewhere as you shop. This system is a little disjointed, and you will waste some time getting into and out of each envelope making your shopping trip last longer. Envelopes tend to tear and wear out quickly and they will need to be replaced often.
The Recipe Box Coupon Organizer
Recipe boxes with a set of dividers are another solution. Recipe or index card boxes keep things organized, but also have a few drawbacks.
Advantages: The recipe box method is also inexpensive and relatively fast to create. Another advantage over the envelope coupon organization method is that you can see what coupons you have more easily.
Disadvantages: The recipe box coupon organization method can be cumbersome and a bit bulky to handle in stores. This system works better if you don’t have small children with you to sit in the front of the care. Still, if you spill the box (this has happened to me on more than one occasion) it will take you hours to sort through the mess and put things right. Not a fun job when you run into this type of fiasco.
The Shoebox Coupon Organizer
If you ever get really heavily into coupon shopping and rebating, the shoebox coupon organizer will give you all the space you need and then some. Like the recipe box coupon organizer. The shoe box coupon organizer method is inexpensive and fast to create. All you really need is a shoe box or plastic shoe box and a set of dividers.
Advantages: You can put this type of organizer together quickly and inexpensively as I’ve said, and this method offers the additional advantage of room to grow. Most of us will never outgrow the space that the shoebox coupon organizer will offer.
Disadvantages: The shoebox coupon organizer really is a bit of overkill for most coupon shoppers. This method is bulky and cumbersome to manage while shopping. Did I mention that my big spill in the grocery store was with a full shoebox of coupons? Not only was I embarrassed beyond words, but it took me hours upon hours to clean up the mess once I got home. I switched methods after this experience.
The Binder Coupon Organizer
This is my favorite method and the one I still use today. I love the expandability of this system and its ease of use. Go to the office supply store and get a nice binder or full sized leather portfolio. I have one with a zipper to keep things contained when I’m not shopping just in case. I also bought a set of dividers and several packages of clear protectors with pockets. You can either use the kind for collecting baseball or trading cards or clear pages with pockets to hold business cards for creating your coupon organizer.
Advantages: Binder coupon organizers offer easy and quick access to coupons without needing to thumb through every coupon in a section to find what you are looking for. This system is easily expandable just add extra pages as you need them. This type of coupon organizer is also fast and inexpensive to create, and minimizes the potential for spilling coupons as you shop.
Disadvantages: This system is a bit cumbersome to manage while shopping due to its size, but not considerably more that some of the other methods.
In selecting a coupon organizer to meet your needs, it really depends on what you are comfortable with. You need to consider what will meet your storage needs and help you to locate your coupons both easily and efficiently.
Whichever system you select, make it easy on yourself and your grocery shopping trips will be much more enjoyable while your savings grows.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Secret Grocery Marketing Strategies that Cost You Money
Any well educated consumer needs to be aware that using supermarket coupons is simply one technique in reducing grocery expenses. But really, we have only scratched the surface of what you need to know to reduce your food bill. Becoming aware of the secret grocery store marketing strategies supermarkets use to separate you from your hard earned cash is a sure fire way to reduce how much you spend every time you shop.
It’s All in the Plan
Supermarkets are well aware of how to separate you from your cash. They have spent millions of dollars researching consumer behavior and know how to get the job done both quickly and efficiently. The result of all their research is a well planned and elaborate grocery marketing strategy designed to make you spend more than you planned each and every time you shop.
You may be wondering why they have invested so much time, energy and money into getting you to increase spending. Well, it all comes down to profits.
Grocery stores and supermarkets run on very low profit margins, generally 1-2%. Much of what they carry is perishable. If they don’t sell it, they loose the investment on the base cost of the product.
Controlling waste and moving products are the two biggest determining factors of the store’s ability to realize even a modest 1-2% profit. Simply put, the grocery business is really about volume and volume requires every customer that walks through the door to spend as much as they can get you to spend. With margins so low, you can see the need for a cohesive and well planned grocery marketing strategy to accomplish their goals and remain profitable.
Secrets of the Grocery Marketing Strategy
Grocery marketing strategies all center around two main goals. The first is to get you to spend more time in the store than you had planned. Research shows that for every minute we spend in the store the higher the average sale per customer. Why? Impulse spending on unplanned purchases is the culprit.
The second goal, make displays and signage virtually beg you to buy; again your bill at the checkout is greatly increased by impulse spending.
It’s the old chicken and the egg scenario. Did you spend more than you planned because you bought more than intended, or did you buy more because you were in the store longer than you should have been?
Grocery marketers know that the longer you are in the store the more you will buy and have a bunch of sneaky ways to get you to pick up a few extra items here and there.
Grocery Store Layouts Maximize Profits
Grocery store layouts are skillfully designed and planned to make sure that you need to walk through the entire store to get to the areas were staples like milk, eggs, bread and meat are located.
Why do they use this strategy? As mentioned earlier, the longer you spend shopping, and the further you have to walk to buy what you are looking for the more likely you will be to pick up something you had not intended to buy.
Impulse purchases keep the grocery chains profitable and make you spend more than you had planned, escalating your food costs considerably. This is at the heart of their grocery marketing strategy.
Consider the typical grocery store floor plan and design of the store you shop in. How many displays do you need to pass by to find what you are looking for? Your grocery store layout was specifically designed to maximize profits by giving you lots of enticing options besides the gallon of milk you originally stopped to buy.
What items do you buy the most? Produce, meat, eggs, milk, bread, cereal, and beer or wine...we all have staple items that we buy week in and week out. Start to notice what other products are displayed around those items, and how many displays you need to pass to get to the products you use the most.
You should also be aware that the specials of the week are not always loss-leaders for the store. Often, they are products at full shelf price and full profit margins with a sale sign to make you think that the price is right. Sometimes the "sale price" is even higher than the regular everyday shelf price. Buyer beware, you should know that a giant display does not necessarily guarantee savings.
Grocery store layouts always have been and always will be designed to maximize profits, no doubt about it.
Slow Down Your Shopping Trip and Maximize Profits
Another commonly used grocery marketing strategy, is to get you to walk slowly, very slowly, through the supermarket aisles. We are back to the old trick of the longer you shop the more you will spend.
How do the grocery marketers get you to spend more time shopping? They play soft, slow music in the background to enhance your shopping experience. Elevator music calms the masses, and gets both you and the shoppers around you to move at a slower pace. How fast can you hope to shop when the person ahead of you is moving along at a snails pace?
Soothing music aside, grocery marketers get even sneakier, in more subtle ways. Grocery marketing strategies have been known to include placing carpets and floor mats strategically to get you to slow your pace as you dodge the obstacles while shopping. I’ll admit that this technique is not nearly as common of a practice as it used to be due to the hazards of people tripping and the liability of a personal injury. I still see it used from time to time, just not as often as it used to be.
A more commonly practiced grocery marketing technique is the placement of giant floor stacks of products arranged just opposite of each other within the grocery store aisles. The floor stacks technique is pretty versatile and used for a number of reasons.
First, two floor stack displays placed directly opposite of each other will slow the flow of traffic in both directions up and down the grocery aisle. You will need to wait to go single file through the narrowed aisle. While you wait, you are naturally forced to look for something else to occupy yourself with in order to not become seriously frustrated with how long your shopping trip is taking. The natural solution is to do what we came here to do in the first place…shop. The more you shop, naturally the more you buy.
Floor stacks are also frequently used to feature items at higher than average profit margins. Sometimes the product really is a good deal and at other times not, so use some caution in selecting products from a floor stack display.
Grocery marketing strategies can get even more subtle. A little known strategy for getting you to buy the item on the floor stack display at the higher profit margin is to use the floor stack to block your view of the competing product that is either lower priced or the better value. Don't fall for this technique. It is wisest to comparison shop with all competing items before making your purchase.
If you spot any of these techniques it is best to get in the habit of taking a second look before making your purchase. From my experience your chances of making a good spending decision are about 50/50 where any display is concerned. Half of the time the product really is a good buy and the store legitimately needs the display space due to the amount of product they expect to sell. The other half of the time, well, let’s just say that the store is getting the better end of the bargain.
What is my best advice for anyone when trying to shop the displays? You should get in, buy what you need and get out. The longer you are in the store, the more you will spend. Approach all displays with the notion that there may be a good deal here, and then again maybe I should pass if there is not a clear cut reason to buy.
Something Smells Really Good
The first grocery shopping tip everyone will give you is to not shop while hungry. Impulse purchases abound when everything you see looks good smells even better.. Hunger simply makes your other senses more acute and with that comes the desire to both buy and eat, immediately if possible.
Grocery stores have taken a trick from the cinnamon roll places found in shopping malls. It is not a coincidence that the enticing aroma of freshly baking bread is a regular 4 PM occurrence in grocery stores across the country. The smell of baking bread brings back the nostalgia of Granny's kitchen around the holidays and makes us positively crave comfort food. If you are hungry then you buy, it is as simple as that. Have hunger, must satisfy craving as soon as possible.
If you are hungry you will spend more right? If you are hungry right now you will run, not walk towards the prepared stuff in the deli and bakery and skip cooking tonight. Who has time to cook when you are starving right now? Take it one step further and you realize you can also avoid dishes tonight and the sale is a done deal for most of us. Convenience costs folks and the supermarkets know it. They are all too happy to supply a solution for a price.
It doesn't happen to hurt the grocery chain’s bottom line that the margins on in store bakeries and deli products are among the highest in the store now will it? They are providing a valuable solution to time pressed consumers after all.
Yep, I've done it too. We are all busy. Leisure time is all too short. We work hard, get tired and just want to find a way to have a little more free time.
As a side note, but a still related grocery marketing strategy I want to share an observation with you. One of the grocery stores in my home town passes around samples of their $5.00 hot deli sandwiches around lunch time. They take their time walking through the store with giant platters of goodies and then direct people over to the in store deli section. I watched in surprise and then some awe one day a lengthy line formed at the deli. They must have had orders for over 50 sandwiches in a about a thirty minute time frame. At $5.00 each a sandwich, that's a marketing strategy that seems to be paying off and a good example of why you should not shop while hungry. Convenience and impulse spending will put a dent in your budget every time, no doubt about it.
Who Moved My Cheese?
As consumers we get used to where the items we buy the most are located on the grocery store shelves. Grocery marketers are aware of this fact, and are pretty good at keeping us off balance while shopping.
They know that the longer you shop the more you will spend. Having to scan the whole section for the one item you are actually looking for certainly benefits them by keeping you in the store longer. But there are other, less known grocery marketing strategies that benefit them as well.
First, and foremost to their bottom line, the manufacturers who produce the products we buy pay top dollar for premium shelf space. Sections are reset several times a year to reflect the changes made due to the slotting allowances that food manufacturers pay on an ongoing basis for the placement of their products. Product placements are big business in the industry and give the supermarket chains a reason to reset the schematics regularly.
You may be wondering what is considered a premium shelf placement. Shelf space at eye level and located away from the start or end of each aisle and with multiple facings of product are all considered prime territory.
Our eyes naturally gravitate to what is displayed at eye level as we shop. We tend to miss items either placed high, low or within the first 3 feet at the beginning or end of each shopping aisle. Just like real estate location is of prime importance. Location, location, location is everything when trying to increase sales volume. Food manufacturers know that having a great location on the shelves, and multiple facings of products is the key to increasing sales volume..
What does this mean for us as consumers? The best deals may not be at placed at eye level. It is always best to shop the entire section and make your spending decisions accordingly.
Still another reason for the frequent resetting of shelves is that new schematics allow for new products to be placed as discontinued products are removed. New products can and frequently do offer higher profit margins during their introductory period due to wholesale pricing set by the manufacturer. A lower than average wholesale price encourages an attractive price to consumers when coupled with aggressive advertising and a series of coupons. Low prices for consumers mean big volume for the food manufacturers.
A Final Word
While these are certainly not the only grocery store marketing strategies supermarkets use to get you to spend, this list represents the most commonly used strategies. There are really too many grocery store marketing strategies to write about all at once. The topic is just too big.
We will be getting to more advanced topics in future articles and posts, but for now I wanted to get you thinking about the grocery store marketing strategies that are the most commonly used so that you can start to realize some savings over your next few grocery shopping trips.
I sincerely hope all of you have a wonderful and safe holiday with the ones you care about the most.
Liz
It’s All in the Plan
Supermarkets are well aware of how to separate you from your cash. They have spent millions of dollars researching consumer behavior and know how to get the job done both quickly and efficiently. The result of all their research is a well planned and elaborate grocery marketing strategy designed to make you spend more than you planned each and every time you shop.
You may be wondering why they have invested so much time, energy and money into getting you to increase spending. Well, it all comes down to profits.
Grocery stores and supermarkets run on very low profit margins, generally 1-2%. Much of what they carry is perishable. If they don’t sell it, they loose the investment on the base cost of the product.
Controlling waste and moving products are the two biggest determining factors of the store’s ability to realize even a modest 1-2% profit. Simply put, the grocery business is really about volume and volume requires every customer that walks through the door to spend as much as they can get you to spend. With margins so low, you can see the need for a cohesive and well planned grocery marketing strategy to accomplish their goals and remain profitable.
Secrets of the Grocery Marketing Strategy
Grocery marketing strategies all center around two main goals. The first is to get you to spend more time in the store than you had planned. Research shows that for every minute we spend in the store the higher the average sale per customer. Why? Impulse spending on unplanned purchases is the culprit.
The second goal, make displays and signage virtually beg you to buy; again your bill at the checkout is greatly increased by impulse spending.
It’s the old chicken and the egg scenario. Did you spend more than you planned because you bought more than intended, or did you buy more because you were in the store longer than you should have been?
Grocery marketers know that the longer you are in the store the more you will buy and have a bunch of sneaky ways to get you to pick up a few extra items here and there.
Grocery Store Layouts Maximize Profits
Grocery store layouts are skillfully designed and planned to make sure that you need to walk through the entire store to get to the areas were staples like milk, eggs, bread and meat are located.
Why do they use this strategy? As mentioned earlier, the longer you spend shopping, and the further you have to walk to buy what you are looking for the more likely you will be to pick up something you had not intended to buy.
Impulse purchases keep the grocery chains profitable and make you spend more than you had planned, escalating your food costs considerably. This is at the heart of their grocery marketing strategy.
Consider the typical grocery store floor plan and design of the store you shop in. How many displays do you need to pass by to find what you are looking for? Your grocery store layout was specifically designed to maximize profits by giving you lots of enticing options besides the gallon of milk you originally stopped to buy.
What items do you buy the most? Produce, meat, eggs, milk, bread, cereal, and beer or wine...we all have staple items that we buy week in and week out. Start to notice what other products are displayed around those items, and how many displays you need to pass to get to the products you use the most.
You should also be aware that the specials of the week are not always loss-leaders for the store. Often, they are products at full shelf price and full profit margins with a sale sign to make you think that the price is right. Sometimes the "sale price" is even higher than the regular everyday shelf price. Buyer beware, you should know that a giant display does not necessarily guarantee savings.
Grocery store layouts always have been and always will be designed to maximize profits, no doubt about it.
Slow Down Your Shopping Trip and Maximize Profits
Another commonly used grocery marketing strategy, is to get you to walk slowly, very slowly, through the supermarket aisles. We are back to the old trick of the longer you shop the more you will spend.
How do the grocery marketers get you to spend more time shopping? They play soft, slow music in the background to enhance your shopping experience. Elevator music calms the masses, and gets both you and the shoppers around you to move at a slower pace. How fast can you hope to shop when the person ahead of you is moving along at a snails pace?
Soothing music aside, grocery marketers get even sneakier, in more subtle ways. Grocery marketing strategies have been known to include placing carpets and floor mats strategically to get you to slow your pace as you dodge the obstacles while shopping. I’ll admit that this technique is not nearly as common of a practice as it used to be due to the hazards of people tripping and the liability of a personal injury. I still see it used from time to time, just not as often as it used to be.
A more commonly practiced grocery marketing technique is the placement of giant floor stacks of products arranged just opposite of each other within the grocery store aisles. The floor stacks technique is pretty versatile and used for a number of reasons.
First, two floor stack displays placed directly opposite of each other will slow the flow of traffic in both directions up and down the grocery aisle. You will need to wait to go single file through the narrowed aisle. While you wait, you are naturally forced to look for something else to occupy yourself with in order to not become seriously frustrated with how long your shopping trip is taking. The natural solution is to do what we came here to do in the first place…shop. The more you shop, naturally the more you buy.
Floor stacks are also frequently used to feature items at higher than average profit margins. Sometimes the product really is a good deal and at other times not, so use some caution in selecting products from a floor stack display.
Grocery marketing strategies can get even more subtle. A little known strategy for getting you to buy the item on the floor stack display at the higher profit margin is to use the floor stack to block your view of the competing product that is either lower priced or the better value. Don't fall for this technique. It is wisest to comparison shop with all competing items before making your purchase.
If you spot any of these techniques it is best to get in the habit of taking a second look before making your purchase. From my experience your chances of making a good spending decision are about 50/50 where any display is concerned. Half of the time the product really is a good buy and the store legitimately needs the display space due to the amount of product they expect to sell. The other half of the time, well, let’s just say that the store is getting the better end of the bargain.
What is my best advice for anyone when trying to shop the displays? You should get in, buy what you need and get out. The longer you are in the store, the more you will spend. Approach all displays with the notion that there may be a good deal here, and then again maybe I should pass if there is not a clear cut reason to buy.
Something Smells Really Good
The first grocery shopping tip everyone will give you is to not shop while hungry. Impulse purchases abound when everything you see looks good smells even better.. Hunger simply makes your other senses more acute and with that comes the desire to both buy and eat, immediately if possible.
Grocery stores have taken a trick from the cinnamon roll places found in shopping malls. It is not a coincidence that the enticing aroma of freshly baking bread is a regular 4 PM occurrence in grocery stores across the country. The smell of baking bread brings back the nostalgia of Granny's kitchen around the holidays and makes us positively crave comfort food. If you are hungry then you buy, it is as simple as that. Have hunger, must satisfy craving as soon as possible.
If you are hungry you will spend more right? If you are hungry right now you will run, not walk towards the prepared stuff in the deli and bakery and skip cooking tonight. Who has time to cook when you are starving right now? Take it one step further and you realize you can also avoid dishes tonight and the sale is a done deal for most of us. Convenience costs folks and the supermarkets know it. They are all too happy to supply a solution for a price.
It doesn't happen to hurt the grocery chain’s bottom line that the margins on in store bakeries and deli products are among the highest in the store now will it? They are providing a valuable solution to time pressed consumers after all.
Yep, I've done it too. We are all busy. Leisure time is all too short. We work hard, get tired and just want to find a way to have a little more free time.
As a side note, but a still related grocery marketing strategy I want to share an observation with you. One of the grocery stores in my home town passes around samples of their $5.00 hot deli sandwiches around lunch time. They take their time walking through the store with giant platters of goodies and then direct people over to the in store deli section. I watched in surprise and then some awe one day a lengthy line formed at the deli. They must have had orders for over 50 sandwiches in a about a thirty minute time frame. At $5.00 each a sandwich, that's a marketing strategy that seems to be paying off and a good example of why you should not shop while hungry. Convenience and impulse spending will put a dent in your budget every time, no doubt about it.
Who Moved My Cheese?
As consumers we get used to where the items we buy the most are located on the grocery store shelves. Grocery marketers are aware of this fact, and are pretty good at keeping us off balance while shopping.
They know that the longer you shop the more you will spend. Having to scan the whole section for the one item you are actually looking for certainly benefits them by keeping you in the store longer. But there are other, less known grocery marketing strategies that benefit them as well.
First, and foremost to their bottom line, the manufacturers who produce the products we buy pay top dollar for premium shelf space. Sections are reset several times a year to reflect the changes made due to the slotting allowances that food manufacturers pay on an ongoing basis for the placement of their products. Product placements are big business in the industry and give the supermarket chains a reason to reset the schematics regularly.
You may be wondering what is considered a premium shelf placement. Shelf space at eye level and located away from the start or end of each aisle and with multiple facings of product are all considered prime territory.
Our eyes naturally gravitate to what is displayed at eye level as we shop. We tend to miss items either placed high, low or within the first 3 feet at the beginning or end of each shopping aisle. Just like real estate location is of prime importance. Location, location, location is everything when trying to increase sales volume. Food manufacturers know that having a great location on the shelves, and multiple facings of products is the key to increasing sales volume..
What does this mean for us as consumers? The best deals may not be at placed at eye level. It is always best to shop the entire section and make your spending decisions accordingly.
Still another reason for the frequent resetting of shelves is that new schematics allow for new products to be placed as discontinued products are removed. New products can and frequently do offer higher profit margins during their introductory period due to wholesale pricing set by the manufacturer. A lower than average wholesale price encourages an attractive price to consumers when coupled with aggressive advertising and a series of coupons. Low prices for consumers mean big volume for the food manufacturers.
A Final Word
While these are certainly not the only grocery store marketing strategies supermarkets use to get you to spend, this list represents the most commonly used strategies. There are really too many grocery store marketing strategies to write about all at once. The topic is just too big.
We will be getting to more advanced topics in future articles and posts, but for now I wanted to get you thinking about the grocery store marketing strategies that are the most commonly used so that you can start to realize some savings over your next few grocery shopping trips.
I sincerely hope all of you have a wonderful and safe holiday with the ones you care about the most.
Liz
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