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Grocery coupons can make a substantial saving in monthly grocery bills if they are used wisely. They allow people to get food for less, even sometimes for free. By using the grocery coupons effectively one can easily cut the grocery bill in half. Grocery coupons are freely distributed to consumers in many ways. Newspapers, especially Sunday editions usually provide grocery coupons often in their retail advertisement columns. One can also find grocery coupons at entryway area of shops, supermarkets, malls, shopping plazas and even in cinema theatres.

Several manufactures, retailers provide online grocery coupons over internet either online or through email. There are websites they help to locate and print grocery coupons when people enter their requirements. People who want to avail these coupons have to visit the website, print the grocery coupons and present them while making grocery shopping. Some manufactures often attach free grocery copy on their product packages that can be exchanged for discount in shops.

Grocery coupons are very useful for those who prefer to buy branded products, because normally coupons are issued on specific brands. However, people who buy generic products may not gain much by using these coupons. Keeping grocery coupons organized product category wise, expiry date wise in an easy to use organizer make the shopping and savings a lot easier. It also helps to utilize the coupon before its expiry date. People always tend to throw the expired grocery coupons as they are useless. But the military families around the world are able to use them on base for up to six months after the expiration date if it can be donated to them. It is always better to give the unused grocery coupons to others who can utilize them, rather than putting into dust bin.

A rough estimate shows that around $380 billion worth of grocery coupons are flouting around. However, customers saved only $3.6 billion grocery coupons last year. So, it is clear that the consumers are not finding required grocery coupons for the products they really need. And also most supermarkets say that they are not finding coupons for all their products purchased by the customer regularly. It shows that there are flaws in the present distribution system and they are not reaching the targeted consumers.

With many websites providing online grocery coupon services, this problem has been solved to some extent. These websites are providing information about all available grocery coupons online and offer consumers to order coupons they want or select the coupons from the list for the products they use. They also provide printable grocery coupons which enable the consumer to print the desired grocery coupons at their places and avail the discounts while shopping.

What do you think? Please comment below to tell me.

“We’re shifting from leader to leadership, and from leadership to leadership brand,” says Dave Ulrich, Professor of Business Administration at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and probably the world’s leading guru of Human Resource management. Why the leadership brand is so important and what organisations need to do to create leadership brands forms the basis of his new book, Leadership Brand: Developing customer-focused leaders to drive performance and build lasting value*.

Ulrich pioneered the role of HR as a business function that adds value to employees, customers and investors leadership alike, rather than a support function, and is the author of best-selling books including Human Resource Champions, The HR Value Proposition and Why the Bottom Line Isn’t. His new book is co-authored by Norm Smallwood, fellow University of Michigan academic and his co-founder and partner at consultancy The RBL Group.

“Research shows – and experience confirms – that organisations with strong and effective leadership at all levels achieve superior business results,” says Ulrich. “Just as a product or service brand creates value over generic products or services for its owners, we believe that a corporate brand is sustained and enhanced by that organisation’s leadership brand. Leadership brand represents the identity and reputation of leaders throughout a company. Leaders demonstrate a brand when they think and act in ways congruent with the desired product or firm brand.”Critically, he argues, because a leadership brand is sustainable, it can’t be tied to any individual person, no matter how charismatic and talented they are. “The ultimate test of the success of a leader is when he or she leaves. Is the leadership brand effective enough and broadly enough executed to be recognised by the leader’s successor?”Nor should leadership be something that the top leaders in an organisation do, while others watch – or worse, do something else. “Instead it must engage and be reflected by leaders at every level of the organisation. If a leader two or three layers down the organisation does not reflect the desired brand, that leader dilutes or pollutes an entire segment of the organisation, affecting employee, customer and investor response to the firm and undermining performance.”

The leadership brand in an organisation should reflect customer expectations, argues Ulrich. “You begin to define effective leadership for a firm by asking what customers would want the firm to be known for and, by extension, what its leaders need to know, do and deliver to make that customer identity happen.”

But just as a product or service brand is unique, a leadership brand should be unique too, says Ulrich. While he agrees that 60-70% of what makes a good leader is universal – things like strategy, energy, integrity, passion and character – the other 30-40% should be tied to the strategy or identity of the organisation. “For example, the leader of a technology firm needs the ability to develop new products,” he explains.

This assertion that leadership is not easily transferable is contentious – after all, corporate life on both sides of the Pond is characterised by ‘stars’ or ‘saviours’ being parachuted in to troubled businesses – but demonstrable. For example, Sir Peter Davis turned Reed into a worldwide publishing business and revived the fortunes of Prudential, but failed to turn around supermarket group Sainsbury’s. Similarly, David Beckham couldn’t replicate his stellar performance at Manchester United when he joined Real Madrid.

“What worked in one setting – technology, for example – might not work in another – such as a mature industry,” says Ulrich. “We believe that ‘star’ leaders in one firm or one industry are not likely to succeed in another unless they are adept at identifying and understanding customer expectations in the new industry, and then adapting employee actions to those expectations.”

He continues: “Today’s employees need a different kind of leadership. In the past, they thought of leadership as being the direction given by their supervisor, who controlled them at arm’s length.”

But as technology continues to blur the boundaries between work, home and elsewhere, the more likely employees are to want to work outside the traditional workplace, and the easier it will become. While many employers get nervous about this – how do they know the individual is not skiving, for example? – they often forget the other side of the coin – that is, how much work people routinely do in an evening these days since email became ubiquitous.

Also, continues Ulrich, “The more transparent organisations become, the more motivated employees are by being able to see how the work they do creates value for the users and beneficiaries of their services. Leaders become the bridge for these new employees.”

Helped by more sophsiticated technology, leaders who connect employees to their customers can redefine the boundaries of an organisation, he says. “The trick is to measure what people deliver, not what they do. A leader does not have to observe an employee with a customer, but should instead observe the customer’s commitment in terms of customer share, because the employee inside is connected to the customer outside. So, for example, you shouldn’t hold a sales person accountable for the number of calls they have made, but the number of sales that have resulted. You have to pay attention to the process too, of course – your salesman shouldn’t lie to get a sale – but you need balance.”

The notion of ‘presenteeism’ or ‘face time’ remains all too prevalent, he believes, exemplified in an episode of the US TV comedy Seinfeld. He recalls: “George, the bumbling side-kick, had a car break down at work. So when people came in early they saw George’s car already in the parking lot, and when they left late at night it was still there. George concluded that because people thought he was there, he didn’t need to be there and he went off on vacation.”

However, he continues: “Flexibility only works when it is married with the discipline of performance management,” and one of the reasons so many bosses feel uncomfortable with the concept of flexible working is that creating the kind of rigorous performance management systems required to underpin it involves lots of hard work.

What’s more, flexible working is alien to the experience of many bosses, he points out. “But younger generations – managers as well as staff – will take to it more naturally. You already hear 20-year-olds talking in terms of life-work balance rather than work-life balance, and employers will have to adapt to that shift in expectations,” he concludes.

Published by Harvard Business School Press, distributed across Europe by McGraw-Hill. £16.99.

Previously published in the Business Review, Impact Executives

Original Source – Human Resources Management

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Today 83% of U.S. consumers clip coupons. But are we really saving money? We view coupons as a way to save. Businesses, on the other hand, view coupons as a means to increase their profit by getting more of our money away from us. So how does this work for them?

The first coupon was introduced in 1894 by a druggist who wished to know what customers thought of a new product: Coca Cola. The coupon allowed consumers to sample the product for free. The following year, Post issued a coupon for their new health cereal “Grape Nuts.” To this day, coupons are still frequently used to introduce new products or “improved products to consumers. They are also used to introduce existing products to new customers, enticing those customers away from brand loyalty to a rival company’s comparable product.

If you go through the coupon section of your Sunday paper, you will notice how most coupons are issued for highly processed food products. Many of the coupons are even for rather bizarre products with low nutritional value, like sugary cereals. You may be thinking as you leaf through the ads, “Only $1.99 for a 13oz bag of potato chips, that’s excellent!” Well, that is excellent if you are only comparing potato chips to each other, but compare that to what $1.99 would buy in unprocessed potatoes – about ten pounds – 20 servings, and more than twelve times the weight in chips – and you will see another way that food companies are making profit and digging deeper into your pockets. There is more profit for them to use only one twelfth of the potatoes, process them, and market them to you than it does for them to sell you a potato.

Coupon production and redemption, advertizing, product development, processing, packaging, and distribution of products, however, do cost manufacturers money, and they will most certainly pass on their expenses to the consumer. Generic products which do not have coupons, advertise as heavily, are not continually “improved” by the company selling them, and have simpler packaging, are often identical to brand names and come off the same assembly line, but cost less because the company I not spending as much to bring it to market. They make their profit by offering their products at a lower price.

Does this mean you should avoid using all coupons? No. But in most cases there will be significantly cheaper alternatives for you in whole foods and generic products than using brand name products with their coupons. Use unprocessed foods as much as possible, and keep a price book to compare prices for everything, and you will soon win the food budget game and be amazed at how your food costs go down. In your own diet you may find that there are particular processed products that you like to use, and these are the ones to look for coupons, but don’t forget to compare the brand name + coupon price to a generic version.

 

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Why look a gift horse in the mouth? That is what the Trojans said when they were given a large one for their supposed victory. Coupons are considered shopping gifts and in many cases they are but make sure that the item to buy even with a coupon is not cheaper in one of the generic products. Coupons are the way a manufacturer has of getting the product recognized on the market hoping the consumer will fall in love with their product and always buy. You may very well like the product that much after you have tried it but if you are trying to save money beware the same product may be cheaper in a brand name that is not that well known or as a product branded in the stores name.

You need to take a step down from the matrix and look around before you use that coupon. You may find that it is cheaper to buy the same product only not in a popular brand name. Then often super markets run ads in your local newspaper offering coupons that are really bargains. Major companies like Pepsi or Coke give the supermarket great deals on their products so that the stores can have coupon ads. This enhances the sale of the brand name products and saves the consumers pocket book. Coupon purchases can be very wise purchases but you need to make sure that you are getting a bargain before you use your coupon.

Coupons are great gifts because they can be spent just like real money as long as you are buying the product designated on the coupon. Each year billions of dollars is given away in coupons to the consumer in order to increase sales for the manufacturer and introduce the consumer to the product. Many times the manufacturer may have had the product on the market for years but there is a slump in sales and by issuing a coupon the consumer once again will buy the product. This is good for both manufacturer and consumer. The economy being in such state as it is today many more consumers are depending on the cash value of coupons to supplement their cost of grocery items and dry good items. Many times it is to the consumer’s advantage to use coupons to buy such needed items as toilet paper, laundry detergent, trash bags and other dry good items that are highly needed in the household. Again let us caution that when you are using a coupon it is advisable to go down in the matrix and see if the same items are available in generic brand names at a much cheaper price. The Trojan horse made a great gift later as fire wood but it did not save the city! Make sure that your coupons are worth using before you blow your grocery budget on costly brand name items.

As long as you can get into the habit of using your coupons, you’ll have no problem saving money over the long run.

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Manufacturers began identifying products by placing a mark on the package in the 19th century when production of household goods moved to factories. Several sources cite soap as among the first goods to be so named. Appropriately, soap continues to be among the most broadly and diversely branded products.  Ironically, the notorious entertainment brand it spawned, the soap opera, is not about coming clean, nor is it a musical.

The word brand comes from the Middle English pronunciation of the word burn, as marking things like livestock or wooden crates required imprinting with a hot branding iron. Incidentally, the term “brand new” originally referred to something “fresh out of the fire,” not an elaborate product launch.

People who grew up on TV westerns (the individuals and the genre are both dying breeds) know about
the importance of branding cattle. Back in the day, when range land was not fenced, grazing cattle intermingled freely.  Therefore, ranchers engineered the grueling chore of holding down every newly born or acquired animal and burning a unique logo into his, her or its hide.  This enabled each rancher to find his property at roundup, or if they were stolen and the thieves captured. However, many rustlers were very good at modifying original brands. Clearly, these were precursors of people hawking knockoff purses, pens and polo shirts.

The only westerner not wasting his time branding was the Texas rancher Samuel Maverick, whose legacy has been far reaching.  By concluding that it was pointless for him to bother branding, if everyone else was doing it, his name became a word defined as “independently minded” and its use remains common as Americans have always admired contrariness.  It would be great if we could pontificate that Samuel Maverick was a visionary who made the first business case for selling generic products.  Did he calculate that forgoing the costs related to branding, he could sell his cattle for less and earn profits equal to the other ranchers? Unfortunately, he did not.  In truth, Maverick was not into branding because he was not really into ranching either.

So, it was many years after maverick became a word that the Maverick brand came into being. The 1960s television series, Maverick, propelled the career of a young James Garner who played one of two lovable rogue brothers. Perhaps the popularity of the television series inspired Ford Motor Company to name its new compact car brand Maverick in 1969.  As one of the last domestic car models to take advantage of blind brand loyalty, the Maverick was hugely popular at first.  But, it was no maverick, just another in a long string of poorly made American cars that enabled Japanese manufacturers to successfully imprint their brands into the minds of American consumers.

Relevant to the discussion on branding, our culture received one more endowment from Samuel Maverick.  His grandson, Maurice Maverick, was a U.S. Congressman from Texas who, in 1942, coined the term gobbledygook, which best describes subjects such as brand planning process, brand engagement, brand cohesion, and the like.

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Authorized Generics are generic products produced by brand companies and marketed under private labels at generic prices. That means you can get a drug that is IDENTICAL to the brand product, at a generic price. Learn more at www.prasco.com and http

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Americans love brand name products. They’ll pay just about anything for Levis jeans, Charmin toilet tissue and Heinz ketchup. Yet, they often snub lower cost generic products deeming them “unfit.” Considered inferior by the masses, generic products seem doomed for the clearance shelf. But why? Are name brand products superior? If not, than have we all been duped into thinking anything less than a labeled product is worthy of our attention?

Businesses initiated the concept of product branding more than a century ago in order to make it easier for consumers to differentiate between high-quality manufacturer products and their lesser known locally made counterparts. In the late 1800’s manufacturers devised a plan to help consumers recognize superior companies, and their product lines, by creating brand names unique to individual manufacturers. Customers could quickly and easily recognize their favorite products simply by the way it was packaged, labeled and advertised. That same branding technique now allows the world’s consumers to more easily recognize high-quality American-made products from less reliable ones on the open market.

The United States has a history of developing and selling that set us apart from other worldwide manufacturers, allowing consumers all across the world to know exactly what they’re getting. Brand name products have historically been linked to quality, which has also allowed them to command higher prices.

Consistency and quality is a benchmark of product brands. Well-known brands tend to exceed the sale of generics simply due to the trust they have garnered among customers. Once a customer connects with a certain brand or company, they are apt to go back again and gain when in need of their product.

Advertising too has a lot to do with the success of product branding. After all, a consumer is more apt to purchase a project they’ve seen on TV, heard a jingle for on the radio, and saw plastered on a highway billboard on the way to work, than a product they know little about, even if it is cheaper.

Branding an image or slogan may work well in traditional retail stores, but what about Internet sales? It seems that the branding of individual products is less important in Internet sales, than the branding of the actual site. Research has shown that online consumers are more interested in finding sites they can trust and that offer what they want and need at cheaper prices than in the actual brands being sold, which would indicate a need for e-commerce sites to spend more time marketing their sites more than their products.

As in the case of most marketing strategies, the goal is to find out what your particular consumer is looking for, and then giving it to them. While high-quality branded product is most important in traditional retail stores, today’s internet customer seeks a high-quality internet site above all else.

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