For some, it is a ritual: sitting with the flyers of that week and cutting coupons for the best offers.
For others, it is a lifestyle. The coupon entered the lexicon in the 1950s, and then arrived Extreme couponsThe popular American television program 2010 that worked for four seasons.
And for many, it is a necessity. Most Canadians actively seek ways to save on food costs, including the use of more coupons, according to a 2024 report of the agricultural analytics laboratory at the University of Dalhousie in Halifax.
But as a wave of reports shows a decrease in the distribution and redemption of the coupon, and in the midst of the growing use of AI to search for agreements, is the coupon in danger of becoming a lost art?
Changes in the cupone panorama
“I think it is that the type of coupons is changing,” said Kathleen Cassidy, who directs the popular social media coupons account that lives in a loonie.
Cassidy, who lives in Toronto, regularly publishes agreements and council advice for their hundreds of thousands of followers on social networks.
“We are seeing much more coupons by entering the digital sphere. It is more than cash applications, digital coupons, loyalty points,” Cassidy told CBC News.
However, the use of the coupon, both physical and digital, has decreased in the United States since the 1990s and fell by more than 50 percent between 2006 and 2019, according to a new study in the Journal of Political Economy. The US marketing specialists distributed only 50 billion coupons in 2024, compared to 330 billion in 2010, according to data compiled by the marketing and commercial printing company RRD for the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, traffic to US retailers. While Adobe added that traffic was “modest” compared to other channels such as paid search or email, its “growth has been remarkable, doubleing every two months since September 2024”.
The company also survey 5,000 US consumers for its report, and found that 39 percent used AI for online purchases. Of these, 43 percent said they used AI to search for agreements.
The evolutions of the coupons
The coupons date from at least 1887, when Coca-Cola began to distribute them as a way of increasing the profile of the drink, according to the History Channel. Since then, they have evolved from these traditional newspaper cuts with the redemption in the store, according to a SNIPP report, a technology promotions company.
The 1990s saw the increase in digital discount codes, email promotions and printable coupons, according to the report, and Covid-19 pandemic caused digital coupons to exceed physicists. However, the problem is that the panorama of digital agreements is currently “overpopulated”, according to the report.
And that may be the reason why consumers are increasingly using AI to reduce noise, said Tripat Gill, an associated economy professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.
Samira Hussain informs about the growing trend in the “extreme” coupon cut.
Gill said that using AI reduces the “search cost”, or the time and effort that people dedicate to looking for products.
IA services are marketed as incredibly intelligent and competent, so it makes sense that consumers try to use them to find discounts, said Matthew Guzdial, an assistant professor of computer sciences at the University of Alberta.
But there is a problem, experts agree: “Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work,” Guzdial said.
‘Shopping hack that changes life’
Tiktok is full of consumers of the Z generation who share how AI has helped them save money, from coupon and hunting codes for the best offers, to budgeting help.
“My shopping trick that changes life was when I saw a girl in me [for you page] Let’s say chatgpt for discount codes, “wrote a Tiktoker along with a video in May.
AI can offer a discreet way for consumers to seek cost savings tips, says Guzdial, but models are often wrong. The coupons change regularly, and the models of AI at this point do not have the ability to verify if a code that is in their training data for months or years ago is still valid, he said.
In most cases, a chatbot cannot even search the web as part of an answer, said Guzdial.
Gill says that when it comes to purchasing research, how useful AI depends on how narrow and focused on his warning.
For example, Gill says he recently requested to buy GPT (a feature within Chatgpt) for help to find a digital camera for his teenage daughter who cost less than $ 100. He provided three links, two of which took him to products that were not even cameras.
But if I had asked: “Find me a pink digital camera for a teenage girl for less than $ 100 of Amazon”, the results would have been more reliable, he added.
Can I hunt offers?
As an informal test, CBC News asked Chatgpt if he could find a discount code for Old Navy Canada. He quickly stopped a code for a 20 percent discount.
However, when CBC tried to apply the code, it was “invalid or expired.” The same happened with the next three codes that Chatgpt withdrew, as well as with the codes provided by Cupongpts, a coupon search tool.
Next, CBC asked Chatgpt if he could find a discount for a slow cooking pot. He suggested the slow stainless steel cooking pot of Giant Tiger’s chefman with a 50 percent discount. But CBC could not locate that agreement, or even that slow cooking pot, on the Giant Tiger website. In a closer inspection, the link chatgpt cited as a reference was of an entry of November 23, 2014 in the Smart Canucks blog.
Cassidy, the influence of Toronto’s coupon, says he has not tried AI to find agreements. But he is not looking through paper flyers either. She uses the Flipp application to look through digital flyers every week, which cross reference with different cash refund applications and digital coupons.
“You used to see many physical coupons … whether flyers or inserts or in products in products,” said Cassidy.
“There are still physical coupons out there, but maybe there are not so many available as they used to have.”
