Your own personal universal coupon code tied to your identity, credit card and cell phone used at any store for any products.
Buy all you want and when you checkout the coupon code retrieves all discounts available from your account in an online database and providing you immediate discounts.
The camera phone can dowload bar codes for register scanning.
The stores get paid immediately without having to claim/clear coupons. The merchants can offer targeted discounts direct to a consumer.
The company providing this service makes money clearing the transactions and on targeted promo's with merchants. Possible to license the UC (Universal Coupon) logo and database access to the issuing card companies.
This company would develop one fine database of consumers, their spending and buying habits, Merchants and stores. The information alone is very valuable.
ie.. Ralston Purina would be charged $5 per consumer who purchases a competitors brand of dog food to offer them a free trial can for their pet.-- Shapharian, Oct 21 2007 This is a good idea. The only reason it hasn't been implemented is because, if all the deals offered were actually used, the companies would be poorer. With all the membership perks obtainable with certain cards (West 49, for example), a Universal Coupon card woiuld be revolutionary. (+)-- Shadow Phoenix, Oct 21 2007 This is a good idea. The only reason it hasn't been implemented is because, if all the deals offered were actually used, the companies would be poorer. With all the membership perks obtainable with certain cards (West 49, for example), a Universal Coupon card woiuld be revolutionary. (+)-- phoenix, Oct 22 2007 CUE:Cat-- Noexit, Oct 22 2007 The Merchants would bank cash in their UC account not to different than online advertising. They would have control over the funds in their account and can budget and target specific demographic consumers.
Unlike printed coupons and their associated breakage this form of advertising could be tightly controlled by the merchant.
ie. It's friday night and Labatts wants to offer a free beer to everyone whose ordered a molsen in the past hour. The database extracts a list of consumers who are at a bar who have ordered a molsen (ie. 1370 patrons) in the past hour and a sms coupon is sent to the cell phones of all of these consumers offering a free Labatt's beer for the next hour..
Labatt's is charged $1 per SMS and $5 per consumer who bites on their offer. if only 100 people take advantage of the promo they are charged $1870.
The point is this type of instant gratification and targeted advertising does not exist today and would be powerful.-- Shapharian, Oct 23 2007 coupons are a draw and then they are underused, this is a fact of business. if you made them automatic, as they sometimes are in stores, you'd have to lower the payback amount in order to compensate for 100% usage by customers. still, a worthy notion, so big fluffy bun that's 10% off.-- k_sra, Oct 23 2007 random, halfbakery