Retailers, as opposed to manufacturers, often use coupons as a way to measure response to advertising, particularly when trying a new publication.
Back in the 80s I had a couple of retail stores. There was a new ‘Pennysaver’ type publication in the area. Their salesman was representing the publication’s market saturation and cost effectiveness of advertising as opposed to the traditional area newspaper.
I ran a series of once a week advts. in both the free publication and the daily newspaper. The advt. was the same, but the newspaper had a coupon for 10% off a $10 regular price purchase, the new publication’s coupon offered 15% off the same purchase.
Coupons were good for one week. After the 5 week experiment, I tallied the results. 10 times as many coupons were redeemed from the daily newspaper than the new publication. The daily newspaper’s cost per column inch was double that of the new publication. So I was getting 5 times the response for my money by using the daily newspaper. I did not place any further advts. with the new publication. IIRC, it folded after about 7 months.
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