Escaling and Coupons

Escaling/e-scaling is not electronic scaling, despite the implicitness of my term. Some of you who are familiar with typography would know about E scales, plastic rulers used for measuring printed letters (using capital E as standard), line spacings, and line thicknesses. I bought and used two when I took desktop publishing, um, way back. Looking at them recently provided a trip down memory lane for uses. Those of you who used E scale(s), what features did yours have?

A couple of weeks ago, I started my usual pre-grocery store ritual of reviewing print coupons to consider using. OK. Tossed out expired ones that I wasn't all that committed to using. Re-stuffed ones into my later-packet that I can wait another couple of weeks. I put the will-use coupons into will-use packet and scribbled the item onto the grocery list with a circumscribed C—"©".

Coupons inspired me think about typography in coupons in addition to usage for buying products and savings or not. Most of my comments pertain to printed grocery store and eatery coupons. The pixstrip includes scans of my Escales and some sample coupons that have characteristics I've listed.

If anyone is in marketing, it'd be great if you would pass this article to your group. If you or your group have anything to do with coupons, my article has the most to say about those incentives. (I'm excluding looking at Groupon here.)

Like for the following types of coupons, applicable mostly for eateries

• Bundling purchase of buying main item and getting side and beverage for free
• Bundling purchase of buying side and beverage and getting main item for free
• Buying one item and getting one free
• Deep discount, such as half off
• Bundling purchase of buying one meal and getting kid version for free

Like for practices by companies for the following features in grocery coupons

• Picture(s) of product
• Legible flavors and names of options, related to typography regarding font size and foreground/background
• Flexibility for sizes applied to and available (really good—applicable to any size)
• For meal-type coupons, adding the store area to seek the items, particularly TV dinners or pre=prepared that are room-temperature, refrigerated, or not obviously frozen-types
• For salad dressing coupons for refrigeration-required dressings, mentioning that they're in refrigerated areas. Same goes for salsas.
• Minimizing ALLCAPS for helping readability (mixed case for visual reading cues) saving physical space
• "Save [coupon value]" rather than "[coupon value]" off
• Savings value in eye-catching 24-point typeface size or larger

Like (preferences) for expiration information, tilted slightly more about coupons for groceries than eateries

• At least a month duration
• The last day of the month
• Sunday preference over Saturday
• At least 8-point font
• Black text on white background (red on yellow common and reasonable)
• Location at the top of the coupon

Forehead furrows—imho, questionable strategies in grocery coupons

• Tear-off coupons on products
  • Some customers might forget to tear them off while in the checkout line.
  • Some customers might tear them off the packages for use in the future.
• Lack of expiration dates

Thumbs down for various practices on coupons

• Requirement to buy more than one item for obtaining the savings, particularly if rolling out a new product
• Requirement to buy multiple different items for obtaining the savings, requiring navigation to different parts of the store
• Inverse colors (e.g., white text on black) for coupon expirations and flavor options
• Even worse, grays for either foreground, background, or both
• "$.nn¢"—indicates ignorance or inattention to detail
• Puny-value coupons—25 or 35¢, buy 2 and save ¢. Really? YMMV for what you consider puny.
• Oversize or overwide coupons that require folding for fitting into a coupon pouch, often obscuring info, requiring that I choose between image/conditions or expiration

Related irritation: Major drugstore chains with overpriced items even with half-off or buy one-get-one-free alleged savings, in addition to requiring loyalty cards for discounts

Other coupon shape considerations
Landscape orientation provides more room for wordwrap than portrait. Also, they're easier to file and pull up for viewing the info. Square or almost square coupons seem to not provide obviously visual sectioning between image, size/variety info, and grocer conditions.

Leftover comments about eatery ads and coupons

• Ads with the following items that can coax the consumer to visit
  • Address and map of eatery, unless the eatery is a well-known chain
  • Website
  • QR code icon
• Irritation about the following conditions that some coupons have:
  • One-week expirations, particularly time window for start/end
  • Time effectivity, such as usable only after 5pm

What features do you see in the images I've included that appeal to you, intrigue you, or bug you? What do you like or dislike about ads and coupons that you run across?

Store Coupon Madness

I clip coupons, mostly grocery store coupons. I also clip eatery coupons, just a lot fewer of them. I've not registered with restaurants.com or groupon. I don't often think to search for coupons online. I myself find that most of the coupons that I see and put any energy into arrive in my Sunday paper. And I dump probably 99%. Call me a bit behind for how I hunt (or not) for savings.

Many years ago, I remember a grocery store at one time hut put up a round-table display with maybe a noble idea that customers would bring in coupons they snipped, and obtain coupons that other people would leave for sharing. I don't remember more than a few weeks had passed that I no longer saw the table. I speculate that maybe the table overflowed from excesses and took too much floor space.

About the early nineties, some local supermarkets started doubling and tripling coupons, up to some maximum value. The campaigns were pretty nice while they lasted. I think they stopped after a year or so. I'm guessing that stores really got squeezed on the margins because of some more diligent customers like me. I do remember that collecting and sorting for the multiple savings was time-consuming, but the payoff pretty good.

I'm less mad now over store coupons than in the past when it seems I embarked on reviewing, clipping, sorting, redeeming, and eventually tossing out numerous saved ones. Alas, so many would expire. Or the store didn't handle the product. Or I waffled over whether I really wanted to hunt down the products. I'm now better at reviewing for items I think I might buy and use coupons for. I've arrived at coupon characteristics that get my attention, for good and bad. The following lists are my coupon raves and peeves.

Coupon characteristics that make me cheer

• General
  • Plenty of coupons for merchandise that I buy
  • Numeric value that amounts to 25 to 50% off or better
  • Buy one, get one free (maybe even buy two, get one free)
  • Applicable savings for single-serving rather than bulk such as packaged candy (evil food)
• Visuals
  • Clearly legible expiration date, preferably one month or more, for a Sunday or end of a month
  • Thorough information, such as store area type, applicable varieties, packaging (weights, counts)—"any size or variety" favored
  • Graphics, such as color pictures for iconic visual processing (My local supermarket has in-house, yellow, portrait-oriented coupons that would be even more attractive with at least line images.)

Coupon characteristics that drive me mad:

• General
  • Dinky value, like 25 or 40¢. Inflation has crept up so much over the years, even $1 savings is no longer necessarily compelling. Don't those nationally known companies marketing people pay attention to how out-of-date those humongous savings look?
  • Discount offers that look good, but the list price is so high that the savings are no savings (predominant condition in drug stores, it seems)
  • No such item in store
  • No such item for that manufacturer
  • No such packaging size for that manufacturer
• Bundling
  • Requirement to buy more than one, such as so-much-off if you buy two
  • Requirement to buy more than one type of product. This condition makes the hunt like a treasure hunt. My supermarket frequently has deals for buying one or two items, and throwing in one to 6 items, many house-brand. Sometimes I bite, often not.
• Expirations
  • Short expiration time window
  • Expiration date placed anywhere except at the top (I hate hunting for dates, especially when they are at the bottom of the coupon.)
  • Expirations that are NOT on Sundays or ends of the months (I'm a Sunday shopper most times, and it bugs me when I miss a coupon by one day because of my own oops.)
  • Time windows with a start date that occurs after the current calendar date
• Visuals
  • Gradient or or other poor contrast between background and foreground
  • Tiny font (sixes, fives, nines, and eights when they all look similar)
  • Illegibility or graphics resolution for varieties of the product (occasionally, misalignment of color layers, particularly in accompanying ad)
  • Lack of information for store area location, particularly for meals that could be room temperature, refrigerated, or frozen Yes, I do microwavable meals! (If I need to hunt, I'm not likely to.)
  • Pet food coupons that accompany ads with pictures resembling people food
  • Oversized coupon, requiring folding
  • Undersized coupon, easily misplaced or misfiled
  • Questionable literalness for items, such as exact flavor, item size that falls outside the coupon listed range

Although my focus is on grocery store coupons, I have a few thoughts about eatery discounts. Likes: Good savings value, expiration, discounts places I go to or would go to. Dislikes, applicable to the ad than the offered discount itself: No address, phone number, maps, web address.

The 99¢ Effect and Other Saver Thoughts

My article started out about pricing with regard to saving, particularly how 99¢ is such a popular price, a price ending, anyway. As I "scribbled" my streams of consciousness—besides 99¢—thoughts also included tenths of cents still anachronistically attached to gasoline per-gallon prices, coupons, before/after price changes indicated in print ads, sales taxes that no advertiser includes, and baked goods pricing.

As the seasonal buying rush is spiking around this time, this might be an appropriate time to discuss the psychology of pricing at 99¢. Dr. Robert Schindler, Professor of Marketing at Rutgers has been cited as an expert about the pricing psychology. A couple of papers specifically address 99 as price endings, which you can find links to at his faculty website. An educational resource that splits the pricing psychology is at Ohio State University Extension "Fact Sheet". The paper discusses use of 99¢ rather than $1, and 49¢ rather than 50¢. As for news, blog articles, and forums regarding 99¢, googling for 99 cents effect will yield lots of results for those mildly curious to those who want to turn in a research paper for a grade. (No, I'm not listing all my sources I ran across. Students need to do their own finding and sifting.)

One topic related to 99¢ that has intrigued me over the years has been the price of gasoline. I'm not attuned to non-US prices, so I'm just talking about stateside per-gallon listings. It's had that pesky decimal point to indicate tenths of a cent per gallon for as long as I can remember—let's say when gas was under 49.9¢ a gallon. Even when it's risen to over $4.00 a gallon, and has receded to currently over two and under three dollars (I know, mushy spread—so my article doesn't risk becoming obsolete overnight), the stations insist on keeping that nine-tenths of a cent price appendage. I say, kill the fraction of a cent pricing and be done with it! Don Boudreaux's blog article from 2006 discusses gasoline pricing in even closer detail than just the nine-tenths cent.

Coupons! With this economy, I sense a lot more people are using them. It can get exhausting sifting through piles, deciding which ones to save, which to use for which trip, how to sort them so they don't expire before getting a chance to use them. Sunny side up—good value coupons for items you use AND go on sale at the same time! Not so sunny—coupons for items you can't find, are the wrong packaging, expire about a week before you remember you had them, and have expiration dates a day before you regularly shop. (And you momentarily didn't extend your mental calendar out far enough.)

One thing that I've always viewed wryly is the newspaper or store trumpeting the aggregate value of coupons in the packet I just received. "Save $90!" "$199.40 coupon savings!" These statements never come with estimated purchase totals if you truly bought all the items required to save as much as they claim. Hmmm, who would buy EVERYTHING in the advertising packet anyway?

Markdowns and markups get such different treatments in print ads. If an item's price goes up, and it's a fresh ad, you never get to view the "before" price. If a hardcopy print ad (or menu) price goes up, there's usually a huuuuuge splotch that obliterates what the former price was. But you know it went up! In contrast, if a print ad shows a price decrease, the older price is visible, with a wimpy, usually horizontal or diagonal strikethrough, then the new price listed nearby. Mustn't miss the potential savings!

What about a menu price decrease? I'm guessing it happens infrequently. If price decreases occur, I think eateries print up new submenus. Maybe they create new dishes with more customer-friendlier prices. Lots of discount coupons have been appearing in the newspaper and mail as well. And more and longer happy hours.

Advertisers seem to almost always ignore state sales taxes as they entice us to spend. The oddest and imho, most dishonest ads I find are the ones that practically declare you can buy an item for the exact price they advertise. The ones that most come to mind are fast food, cars, and services (utilities). Only $49.99 a month! Only $9.99! Only 99¢! Okay, maybe "Only $1!" Right.

Another advertising strategy I find entertaining is the breaking down of price per unit. Something that's only so much per month can get quite expensive when extended out to a year. Say you get cable for $29.99 a month (special deal?). (There's that pesky 99¢-effect pricing again!) Well, in a year, that comes to $359.88 a year. If they advertise it as a per-day cost, it sounds a lot less costly—98.6¢ a day, less than a dollar a day! It's a bit interesting to me that not more companies are pushing daily-cost unit-pricing instead of monthly-cost. Maybe that's coming. Oh, let's also remember about taxes that go on top of the advertised prices.

Speaking of per-unit pricing transitions, remember when cakes and pies sold by the whole units? They still sell them that way, but it seems they've gotten so expensive that the new units are by the slice. In the case of cakes, cupcakes have also become unit pricings. Ahhh, cupcake prices have now approached the price of what whole cakes used to cost. (A way to return to less expensive cakes is to bake and frost your own.)