Does anyone still clip coupons? Consumers want deals, but how they find

For some, it’s a ritual — sitting down with that week’s flyers and clipping out coupons for the best deals.

For others, it’s a lifestyle. Couponing entered the lexicon in the 1950s, and then came Extreme Couponing, the popular 2010 U.S. television show that ran for four seasons.

And for many, it’s a necessity. The majority of Canadians are actively seeking ways to save on food costs, including using more coupons, according to a 2024 report from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax. 

But as a wave of reports shows a decline in coupon distribution and redemption, and amid the increasing use of AI to hunt down deals, is couponing in danger of becoming a lost art?

Changes in the coupon landscape

“I think it’s that the type of couponing is changing,” said Kathleen Cassidy, who runs the popular social media couponing account Living on a Loonie. 

Cassidy, who lives in Toronto, regularly posts deals and couponing tips to her hundreds of thousands of followers across social media.

“We’re seeing a lot more couponing entering the digital sphere. It’s more of the cash-back apps, the digital coupons, the loyalty points,” Cassidy told CBC News.

Yet coupon use, both physical and digital, has been declining in the U.S. since the 1990s and fell by over 50 per cent between 2006 and 2019, according to a new study in the Journal of Political Economy. U.S. marketers distributed just 50 billion coupons in 2024, compared to 330 billion in 2010, according to data compiled by marketing and commercial-printing services company RRD for the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, traffic to U.S. retail websites via generative AI jumped 1,200 per cent in February compared to six months earlier, according to a March report from Adobe. While Adobe added the traffic was “modest” compared to other channels like paid search or email, its “growth has been notable — doubling every two months since September 2024.”

The company also surveyed 5,000 U.S. consumers for its report, and found 39 per cent used AI for online shopping. Of those, 43 per cent said they used AI to seek deals.

The evolutions of coupons

Coupons date back to at least 1887, when Coca-Cola started distributing them as a way to boost the drink’s profile, according to the History Channel. They’ve since evolved from those traditional newspaper clippings with in-store redemption, according to a report from Snipp, a promotions tech company.

The 1990s saw the rise of digital discount codes, email promotions and printable coupons, the report says, and the COVID-19 pandemic caused digital coupons to surpass physical ones. The problem, however, is that the landscape for digital deals is currently “overcrowded,” according to the report.

And that may be why consumers are increasingly using AI to cut through the noise, said Tripat Gill, an associate…