Over on my side of the pond (The New World) coupons for merchandising are ingrained in the American culture. A more accurate statement would be ingrained in the North American culture. My neighbors to the north in Canada can spell the word: Special Sale in both English and French. South of the border the supermarkets issue customer barcodes for discounts and customer tracking like any of the American supermarkets or sporting good stores.
Clearly this is not just a North American phenomena. Chances are even if you are using a language translator to read this article, you can spell, Groupon.
What I’m about to say may sound like I am slamming Groupon. Nothing could be further from the truth. This time last week I found a great new hoagie shop thanks to Groupon and I’m writing to you on a 32 inch display purchased from Groupon Goods. I hardly use it at all as a 3-D TV, which is what it was sold as. However the display and specs were so sharp, with its four HDMI ports, and DisplayPort adapter it makes a great monitor.
And Groupon may have met its match in PassJoy.
Currently, PassJoy is an iPhone app. Since it is IOS, there is no reason it couldn’t be used on an iPad (I haven’t tried that).
Both the merchant and consumer can think of PassJoy as little synchronized webpages. The operative word here is synchronized. In other words a coupon from a merchant that morphs over time. So here we have a coupon from a merchant that changes, does not expire.
In other words, a dynamic customer loyalty program with nothing for the consumer to manage.
This is huge.
While here at Ektek.net the focus is a fresh look at technology and PassJoy certainly passes that test I want to close with a warning to those of you who market specials with coupons.
15 years ago I was out of town on a training job. My motel had a kitchen and I was buying groceries for 10 days. The nearest store was an Albertsons, so I went there. It was a 24 hour store and it was certainly off-hours. I did not have an Albertsons “loyalty card”, i.e. barcode stamped on me. I explained I was from out of town. I had picked some items off-the-shelf where the tags standing out perpendicular to the products were “on sale”. Since I didn’t have a barcode, I wasn’t worthy of the sale price.
That was 15 years ago or more. It’s not only safe to say I have not darkened the door of an Albertsons store since. In fact, my blood pressure goes up a few points when I see their logo.
Coupons are great. And they’re worthless without employee training.
