Cellphone Coupons – NYTimes

Hunter Gilmore was never big on clipping coupons. “You stick them on the fridge, meaning to use them, and it never happens,” said Mr. Gilmore, a 29-year-old actor and advertising agency recruiter in Manhattan.

But thanks to his cellphone, Mr. Gilmore has lately been awash in discounts, regularly scoring reduced prices and special offers that he would never cut out of a newspaper circular.

The convenience of digital coupons is appealing to a new crop of shoppers, many of whom would not dream of carrying around a crumpled pile of paper coupons just to get 30 cents off a box of spaghetti.

Analysts say mobile coupons are also more likely to be redeemed. Cellfire says its redemption rate for mobile coupons is 15 to 20 percent. Paper coupons, by comparison, have redemption rates lower than 1 percent.

“It’s so easy because the coupons are already sitting on your phone,” Mr. Gilmore said. At check-out, he simply shows the coupon on his cellphone screen to the cashier, who enters a code to apply the discount.

But not every coupon leads to a good finds and it’s hit or miss, you can get a great deal, but sometimes it’s junk. Not all of the deals are fabulous.

In addition to consumers, retailers — particularly ones with perishable items that need to sell quickly — are becoming fans of mobile coupons. Buttercup Bake Shop, a bakery in Manhattan, used 8coupons to offer cupcakes for 8 cents for one day only. Subscribers to 8coupons were alerted via a text message.

“It was very successful,” said Kara Martinez, director of operations at Buttercup Bake Shop. “We had a little over 500 people show up.”

Check out the full story at the New York Times : Coupons you don’t clip, sent to your cellphone.