Couponing Trends

One of the strengths of newspapers used to be the Sunday ads and coupons. That is changing:

Visits to Coupon Websites Up 56% from 2007, Classifieds Site Visits Up 113%

The weekly share of US visits to a custom category of coupon websites increased 56% for the week ended June 6, 2008 compared with the equivalent week last year as consumers turned to the web to cope with increases in the cost of living, according to Hitwise.

Coupons.com received the largest market share of visits within the category at 29%, with its market share increasing 190% from the same week last year; Coupon Mountain and Eversave followed with 14% and 6% share, respectively, Hitwise said.

Below, additional findings issued by Hitwise.

Search engines accounted for 20% of the traffic referred to coupon sites. Among the top 250 search terms driving traffic to the coupon websites, 60% of the search queries include a specific retailer brand or branded product:

The remaining queries were split between generic searches for terms such as “grocery coupons” and “promo codes” and navigation by the names of coupon websites.

“Retailers can entice purchases by making discounts available to price-conscious consumers as the cost of living continues to increase,” said Heather Dougherty, research director at Hitwise. “While discretionary income is shrinking for some households, consumers are still shopping online, but making sure that they find the best deals.”

Additional Cost-Cutting Trends in Retail

US visits to comparison shopping websites increased 51% for the week ended June 6, 2008 compared with the equivalent period last year.

US visits to discount retailers increased 25% in the week ended June 6 compared with last year, while traditional department stores increased 15%.

US searches on the term “coupons” sending visits to Shopping & Classifieds websites doubled for the week ended June 6 compared with the previous year.

Shopping & Classifieds Category Visits Up

The market share of US visits to the Shopping & Classifieds category increased 26% in May 2008 compared with May 2007.

Moreover, consumers are selling and buying goods through classifieds websites.

The Classifieds sub-category experienced the largest year-over-year growth in monthly market share of visits among the all of the Shopping & Classifieds categories.

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