$4.6 Billion in coupons redeemed last year

Observation:  This morning’s Research Brief offers another angle on a topic we wrote about a couple of weeks ago:  That coupon redemption was up more than 12% last year.  The source is listed (again) as NCH Marketing, a Valassis company.  Click here to see the complete story.

Implications:   This week, I’m preparing to talk with a major group of Chamber of Commerce organizations… so I’ve been spending significant time thinking about the current state of the economy and business.

If you weren’t paying close attention, the past thirty-one months (since the recession ended) may have felt like economic purgatory; we were no longer living through the Great Recession, but hardly felt as if we were in the glow of a Great Recovery, either.

For those who have been paying close attention, the past 2½ years have been a period of reconciliation… a term we’ve hammered on quite frequently at this site (click here to see a set of stories on the topic).  The NCH Marketing study on coupon redemption seems to support that idea; that people are sticking to spending habits and saving strategies that help them cope with a set of financial realities that are different from their pre-recession purchase priorities.

Mike Anderson, for the Elm Street Economics consumer trends blog. A service of The Center for Sales Strategy, Inc.