Buzz: Google Coupons

"All the consumer needs to do it take 15 seconds a day to..." -- many a dead internet start-up hoping for consumer behavior change Consumers don't always behave in the most efficient or logical manner. Many a start up has gone under waiting for the consum

"All the consumer needs to do it take 15 seconds a day to..."
    -- many a dead internet start-up hoping for consumer behavior change

Consumers don't always behave in the most efficient or logical manner. Many a start up has gone under waiting for the consumers to see the light and change their daily routine. Unfortunately, for most, people don't like to change their routine and the best solutions involve interacting with consumers while they are doing something they are already doing. Online couponing has been one area that has always held significant promise but failed to deliver.

Online coupons have been an elephant graveyard for the tech world. You would think that this would be much more useful for traditional coupon clippers. Tell a service what you like and have it deliver the relevant coupons to you (web, email, stored value card, etc). Alas, Coolsavings, CouponSurfer.com, Coupons.com, CouponBar, eBates, eBay, Entertainment Book, Eversave , Keycode, Valpak.com have all tried to crack the code but to no avail. It seems that people don't want to go through the effort of setting up preferences, visit their account (or get emails), print them out and take the coupons into stores. Too much work. They prefer to clip the coupons out of the circulars.

Google has addressed many challenges in one clean strategy. It will let businesses offer discount coupons if they use the Google Maps service. This is a direct assault on both the coupon and yellow pages business. The benefits are the following:
1) higher redemption/use: consumers are indicating interest when they look up a business or address on the map.
2) adoption: unlike other coupon sites, it does not require the consumer to change behavior. They are already browsing for the location and this pops up. Like with their search ads, this is taking advantage of the consumer self-identifying interest.
3) more search $'s: Google is betting that users will increasingly use their local search if they know they will likely get discounts on products at those stores.
4) more ad $'s: Businesses may spend more money promoting their coupons through the Google ad network.

5) kick-starts local search: Google's local search business has had limited success to date. This has the potential  to get this scaling much more rapidly.

I have been waiting for someone to figure out how to get online coupons to work. Current models have been to invasive and require too much effort on the users part. In addition to being much more straight forward, this system is also...free to both consumers and businesses. Looks like another marketing sector is feeling the wrath of Google.