Jeff Jarvis has a blog post up about changes to the newspaper, and brings up the topic of coupons disappearing from the papers, and how that affected a pub he worked at a few years back. I’m not going to delve too much into the argument, but I will say, flat out, that I purchase the Sunday paper where I live *purely* for the coupons for the grocery store. That’s not to say that I don’t read any of the paper (the comics, especially), because I get most of the stories online - but pretty much I’m only buying the paper for saving money at the grocery store. Should we take a survey on this? I bet we’d get a lot more than just me and the one commenter on Jarvis’ site who does the same with a Philadelphia newspaper.
So if the paper decided to ditch the coupons - or my carrier decided s/he wanted all of them for her/himself, I’d ditch the paper. Probably along with a few other people. In effect, I’m buying advertisements.
2 responses so far ↓
1 CT // Jan 27, 2006 at 5:06 am
I’ll assume your behavior here is the norm, only because I’m completely opposite (and thus, off the beaten path, as usual). The first thing I do when I bring in my Sunday paper off the front yard is remove all the ad flyers — and toss them into the trash, sight unseen. An insert will have to have something especially outstanding to catch my eye, and that happens, literally, maybe once every couple of months (typically around holiday or birthday gift time).
2 Tom // Jan 28, 2006 at 5:24 pm
I wouldn’t go that far, as I think that most people don’t have these habits, but I throw away most of the regular ads too - the coupons get to stay!