For decades, shoppers have clipped coupons from newspaper ciruculars, magazines and coupon booklets.  Coupon redemption peaked in the early 90’s and  gradually declined as grocers began their loyalty card programs that reward repeat shoppers with discounts.

But with the recession last year, the number of coupons redeemed rose 27%, to 3.3 billion from 2.8 billion in 2008, according to Inmar, Inc.  a coupon processing company.

All of this deal making isn’t great for grocers, some have seen their profits decrease by all of this discounting.  Craig Herkert, Chief Executive Officer for  Supervalu, Inc., – (operators of Jewel, Albertson’s and other grocery stores), has said that shoppers with an eye for discounts were “executing with surgical precision.”

An example of said  ”surgical precision” is a shopper that found  .50 cent coupons for a meat seasoning product.  She took the .50 cent coupons to a  supermarket  that was  doubling the coupons’ value.  Because the meat seasoning product was on sale for $1.00 each, she got them FREE!

One shopper noted that you need to be somewhat familiar with the product you are using multiple coupons on.  Her example, she combined 20 coupons from a retailer and a manufacturer to get $5.00 bags of dog food for -0- FREE! ; – a six month supply. 

However, her dogs didn’t like the food and she ended up donating it to a local animal shelter.  Not a bad thing for the shelter, but use restraint when combining coupons if you haven’t  tried the product. 

 And if you have tried the product and are happy with it, full speed ahead with combining retailer and manufacturer coupons!

Excertps from this article were from a Wall Street Journal article on couponing.

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