If the information from eMarketer can be trusted, over 88 million adults in the United States will download online coupons this year, and the trend is scaling upwards annually.
That’s a lot of discounts and freebies! And yet according to the same studies, this will represent only 22% of U.S. households in 2011.
What I found even more interesting in this article is the fact that most of these coupon users are affluent and over 55. That’s fabulous marketing information to be sure, but it is somewhat perplexing. Most of the bargain hunters online are more able to afford whatever it is they are buying than the majority of the non-online coupon users. Taking into account that affluent Americans will have access to more electronic devices from which to download coupons, there is still the unquestionable fact that there are enough computers in the hands of Americans to average 2 per household; the non-affluent must own a good number of them.
So why are those who need a financial break most, not at the top of the coupon-user rolls? Don’t expect the answer from me – this is a rhetorical question.
Maybe it is a lack of education in some cases (not school education, but general news education – the knowledge that there even ARE online coupons available). Certainly affluence lends itself to the ability to achieve higher levels of education, but it doesn’t necessarily make anyone more street-smart. Knowledge about online coupons is street savviness and you would assume those who are trying harder to make ends meet would be more attuned to that kind of knowledge.
Perhaps it is as simple as the leisure time afforded to the more financially secure. You don’t have 2 jobs to get to every day so you have more time to surf the web and both discover about and discover the actual online coupons.
Or then again maybe the statistics speak to something more significant – could it be that a high percentage or even a vast majority of these online offers are provided only for upper-end products and services? More discounts for massages, cruises, and flat screen televisions than for medicines and food basics? From my own observations in my limited little world here in south Florida, this is where I would tend to guess lies a large part of the answer to the demographic distributions here.
As an Internet Marketing consultant here is the simple advice I would give: with 88 million+ users of online coupons this year, go grab a piece of that pie. Secondly, if you have products or services that can reach a wide demographic of age and financial status, put out more and more of these discount offerings at the low end of product pricing. There is obviously a large and under-tapped market of non-affluent Americans who could use a break; there is no reason you should not be able to capitalize on that fact, help some people out, and grow your business at the same time.
Make 10 sales for $5.00 or 1 sale for $50.00 – only you can decide if the math is equal.
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