Ten years ago as a student, Kathleen Cassidy discovered the power of coupon When shopping for food.
Nowadays, with a rise Food prices Taking a bite out of Canadians’ wallets, Cassidy took to social media to share her experiences saving money at the grocery store.
said Cassidy, founder of the company Live at loonie social media blog.
“Depending on what you use and how loyal you are to the brand, you can definitely save a lot of money.”
Canadians are turning to coupons to save money amid soaring inflation
Read more
Coupons made headlines throughout the year as the Bank of Canada works to bring down the inflation rate. according to A recent CIBC surveyMany Canadians use savings strategies such as coupons to save money on purchases. So how does it work?
Coupons are often offered by manufacturers and can be used to obtain discounts on their products, said Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Laboratory at Dalhousie University.
Coupons stimulate the market by offering consumers a discount against the purchase of their products. Coupons are different from grocery flyers, which are a form of advertising run by supermarkets, Charlebois said.
“The coupons will actually incentivize consumers to buy the product by offering a discount, so you have to take physical action to save money, while there is some vertical coordination between the grocers and the manufacturers in the flyers, so the manufacturers want the grocers to promote as much as possible.”
“A lot of times, the financial incentives aren’t necessarily just for the consumers, but for the grocer as well. So PepsiCo will say ‘If you actually put my chips on the front page, left hand corner this week, we’ll give you credits, we’ll give you kind of a profit based on sales’ and things like that. .”
Charlebois added that sometimes coupons can be found in a grocery flyer and can be snapped up. It is a way for a food manufacturer to establish a relationship with a customer.
Usually, manufacturers do not sell directly to consumers. This coupon creates that relationship with consumers. This is the incentive for manufacturers.
“In return, you will give them some data at some point because you may actually have to mail a voucher or use it at the point of sale. If it is used at the point (of sale) itself, it will be returned, it will be recorded, and the manufacturers will know when you bought their product and what other product from whom you purchased their product. This is very important market data.”
Where can I find coupons?
According to the November 7 CIBC poll, which collected a sample of 1,520 Canadians online from Sept. 14-15, 37 percent of respondents said they use strategies such as coupons or searching for deals in-store.
Coupons can be downloaded online from manufacturers’ websites or from thrift sites, Cassidy said, and they can also end up in the mail.
“The other would be when you’re already in the store, so when you’re in the store a lot of times (the paper coupons) are straight from the products in the aisle,” she said.
“So it’s kind of keeping an eye open for those.”
While Cassidy said the coupons have saved her thousands of dollars, when used with other tools like loyalty programs, the savings can add up even more, she said.
“How much money you’ll save when you give out coupons really depends on how much time and effort you want to invest in things,” Cassidy added.
How can Canadians use these tools to save food?
Before going to the grocery store, Canadians should think about a meal plan, Cassidy said. This includes thinking about what they should eat each night, and what is already in the fridge and freezer.
“What items do you actually need to buy? That alone can help you decide which items you need to buy that week, and which proteins are on sale.”
It also helps you cut down on waste because a lot of Canadians will go to the grocery store and pick out a bunch of things that they think they need, but they haven’t kind of thought through what their plan is. So by having a meal plan in place, even before you go to the grocery store, it can really help you save in all of those areas.”
By spending some time online before going to the grocery store, Canadians can find out the fair market value of the items on their grocery list, Charlebois said.
“Do your homework first,” he said, “and then when you show up at the grocery store, if that price doesn’t match the price on your piece of paper or on your phone, just walk away.”
“Don’t go to the same store all the time, go to a different store every two weeks. You don’t have to go to two or three stores a week – just go to one store a week, but alternately, and you’ll find things are very different from store to store, Even if it is owned and operated by the same owner.
Cassidy agrees.
“A lot of stores are fighting for your money and your attention… There’s going to be a lot of loyalty point offers,” she said.
“When you come into the store and spend X dollars, you’ll say, $25 in points or something, so that can really help you redeem loyalty points to get $25 off your grocery bill or whatever the offer is in the store.”