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Stop & Shop Makes Digital Coupons Easy

Stop & Shop Savings Center KioskTwo years ago, five national consumer advocacy organizations, including Consumer World and Consumer Reports, called on a dozen supermarket CEOs to stop digital discrimination and make digital coupons more accessible to less tech-savvy shoppers. There are significant numbers of seniors and lower income folks who do not use the internet or have smartphones and thus they they have been shut out of advertised digital-only offers.

Sample digital coupon

Digital coupons like the one above are advertised in a chain’s weekly sale circular. Generally stores have required shoppers to go to the coupon section of the store’s website or app, and then find and e-clip each particular coupon individually that they want.

Now, one supermarket chain finally heard our call and took decisive action to fix this. Last week, Stop & Shop, the largest supermarket chain in the Northeast, announced it was rolling out “Savings Station” kiosks to the entire chain after successfully completing a one-year test of them in a handful of stores. Installation will be complete by the end of January.

The kiosk is essentially a freestanding screen and barcode reader located at the front of the store. All a customer has to do is scan their loyalty card or enter their phone number on the device, and then all that week’s advertised digital coupons are automatically loaded onto their card or account. It takes as little as five seconds! No more futsing with apps or the coupon section of the store’s website (except for manufacturers coupons). This is NOT a computer in the store where you have to go through all the steps of loading coupons as you would at home. [See earlier video demo.]

This should come as welcome news to the 70-percent of Consumer World readers who told us in a 2022 survey that they would prefer an easy offline in-store method to activate digital coupon savings. Frankly, even for those of us for whom doing stuff online comes more easily, this is a huge time saver.

Hat tip to EntryPoint, the company that developed these kiosks and has launched them in other chains like Food Lion and Winn Dixie also.

We applaud Stop & Shop for taking this innovative step to help digitally-disconnected shoppers finally be able to access digital discounts and to cut their ever-climbing grocery bill.

Now it’s time for other supermarket chains to follow Stop & Shop’s lead and help all their customers get easier access to digital discounts. Albertsons… hello? Kroger… hello?

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Did Albertsons Make Digital Coupons Easier to Find and Use?

For the past two years, consumer groups including Consumer World have tried to sensitize leaders in the supermarket industry about the discriminatory effect of offering certain grocery deals only when using a digital coupon (see story). The issue is that many seniors and lower income folks don’t have cellphones or internet access. As such, they have been cut out of a major way to save on one’s grocery bill at a time of very high grocery prices.

In addition, digitally-savvy shoppers have complained that the digital coupon section of supermarket apps is hard to use because there are hundreds of coupons there thus making that week’s sale item coupons hard to find.

So, are stores doing anything to address these concerns?
 

Star Market and Shaw’s

MrConsumer got very excited recently when Star Market and Shaw’s in New England (owned by Albertsons) seemed to be offering an easy way to clip all that week’s digital coupons required to purchase advertised sale items with just one-click of the cellphone.

Star QR Code

And when he followed their instructions, this is a screenshot of what he saw:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Star QR error

We tracked down the firm that helps create functionality like this for companies. They claimed it worked after testing it around the country (but we suspect they did not follow the explicit instructions noted above to scan the QR code in the app where it absolutely did not work). But, when we contacted Albertsons, they admitted they goofed.

The QR code does not scan from within the 4U Rewards app. We recognize that the verbiage in the flyer needs to be clarified, and our team is making these updates for future circulars. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

They also indicated that all the QR code does is bring one to the coupon section of their app where “the customer can click on the deals that are most valuable for their shopping trip.” So contrary to the plain wording in their circular, the company did not create a simple way “to add all the digital offers” to one’s account.

 

Safeway

Albertsons owns many other supermarket chains including Safeway. For several years, they have utilized “clip or click” coupons but in only some of their locations. These allow non-tech-savvy shoppers to clip and use their digital coupons the old-fashioned way with scissors. Great! More chains should do that.

Safeway Clip or Click

But despite what some might assume, those with the Safeway app cannot simply scan the coupons they want to load them directly into their account. They have to visit the Safeway website or app, and sort through the hundreds of digital offers there to find and e-clip them individually.

In reply to an inquiry from us, Albertsons demonstrated that roundabout way one has to e-clip digital coupons to one’s account. We suggested they could make the system so much easier if they allowed coupons in the ad to be scanned directly into one’s account. They did not comment.

Shoppers at Safeway also cannot automatically “add all digital offers” from this ad to one’s account by scanning the master barcode in the upper right corner of the circular. As with Star and Shaw’s, all that code does when it works is take you to the coupon section of their website or app. Then you have to find the ones you want.

We continue to hope that supermarkets will make it easier for all shoppers, tech savvy or not, to save money by being able to buy digital-only sale items with less hassle. That day is coming at some chains… so stay tuned.

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One Supermarket Makes Digital Coupons Easy to Access in Just-Launched Test

Digital coupons are advertised discounts that require shoppers to individually “e-clip” each coupon they want on the store’s website or app usually before they go to the store. Last year, we highlighted the problem with digital coupons [see original story] at supermarkets because they require having the internet or a smartphone to use. That process effectively shuts out millions of non-tech-savvy shoppers including seniors and low-income folks without such access. And thus they are forced to pay higher grocery prices.

SS digital coupon items

Last November, a coalition of national consumer organizations including Consumer World called on the CEOs of a dozen of the largest supermarket chains to offer an in-store, offline alternative so everyone without electronic access could avail themselves of all the weekly sale items offered at their stores. None of the CEOs responded to us.

Now we learned that Stop & Shop, a leading chain in the Northeast with nearly 400 stores, has just begun a test of a way for all shoppers to easily get all the extra weekly digital discounts without having to use the internet or a smartphone. They are installing a kiosk in select stores right near the main entrance where shoppers simply scan their loyalty card or enter their phone number, and all that week’s advertised digital coupon offers from the Stop & Shop circular will be automatically loaded onto the shopper’s account. No more having to go online to find and individually e-clip the digital coupons you want.

Stop & Shop digital coupon kiosk
See video demonstration

*MOUSE PRINT:

Simplifying all of the above:

Kiosk instructions

That’s all you have to do. The kiosk also provides a printout with special offers for you and a list of some of the digital coupons added to your account. (Suggestion: they need to add all of them to the printout.)

And for those with smartphones, you can check your loyalty card account online to make sure all digital offers have indeed been automatically clipped for you. For example, below you can see that the two digital-only offers shown at the top of this story for chicken parts and ground turkey have been added to MrConsumer’s account just by scanning his loyalty card at the kiosk.

Clipped coupons

We suggest that Stop & Shop and EntryPoint Communications (the developer of the kiosks and its software) simplify the look of the kiosk. There’s too much going on here with multiple signs, irrelevant offers on the computer screen, a product display, and more. The kiosk should, at least initially, simply emphasize to enter your phone number or scan your loyalty card (with a big arrow pointing to the scanner) to get all the advertised digital coupons added to your account. Period.

To their credit, the companies are going to have people posted at the kiosks to guide shoppers though the process of using the system for several weeks after their introduction.

We salute these companies (and those chains that have already adopted kiosks) for stepping up and offering a simple solution to make digital coupons accessible to everyone.