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.
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.
See video demonstration
*MOUSE PRINT:
Simplifying all of the above:
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.
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.
The FTC and 17 states recently