coupon experiment When I was in the fifth grade, I noticed that my mother no longer took advantage of grocery coupons. "It's cheaper to buy the generic brands, even without coupons," she explained. That set me thinking. Could an experiment be formulated to test her hypothesis?
I compiled a list of grocery items and brought the project to my teacher, Mrs. Fotchman. She agreed to extra credit. Over the next three Sundays, I visited Meijer Thrifty Acres and recorded the prices of nearly 300 items.
My mother joined me on the final Sunday, and we spent hours walking the aisles, laughing and frolicking and trying to find the Corn Chex. We bonded as only a mother and son can when they're conducting an asinine, pointless experiment at a local discount store. (More later on the results.)
Long before my experiment, coupons had been the source of quality time for my mother and myself. I still have vivid memories of sitting at the kitchen table and sorting her coupons into a plastic red organizer. Later, I used my birthday calculator to compute how many coupons I'd have to clip, at a "cash value of 1/20 of a cent" to double my $1 a week allowance.
It's not that I'm cheap. Just frugal. I'm the type of person who will blow $1179 on a leather reading chair but still feel great satisfaction when a grocery clerk doubles my 25-cent macaroni-and-cheese coupon. Thriftiness is all-American, and for some reason besides poverty I have always enjoyed using coupons. My personal record is $18 off a $68 bill.
Grocery stores in some cities double the value of coupons. Say you clip a coupon that saves you 25 cents on soup. The grocery store adds another 25 cents, so you save 50 cents. Most stores won't double coupons worth more than 50 cents. In cities where grocery chains double coupons, there are few 50 centers in the papers. Instead, they're all 55 cents. In cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia, which has less intense grocery wars, the coupons are 50 cents. I don't think enough has been written about this.

The Experiment

"Name Brands with Coupons vs. Generics Without: Which is Cheaper?"

Chipper Rowe, et al.

Presented to Mrs. Fotchman, January 1979

Conclusion: It's cheaper to buy the generic and store-brand products than name-brands using coupons.

Methodology: I collected 510 coupons for 278 products from newspapers, magazines and the coupon exchange shoe box at the Loutit Library. My mother and I visited Meijer Thrifty Acres on Dec. 3, Dec. 10 and Dec. 17 and compared the prices of products purchased with coupons to generic and store-brand products. If a comparable generic or store brand wasn't available, we considered the cost of the least expensive brand-name product without coupon savings.

Sample of brand-name items checked:
Aunt Jemima Jumbo Waffles @ 65 cents
(minus 7 cent coupon)
Crazy Cow cereal @ $1.03
(minus 10 cent coupon)

Sample of generic brands checked:
Generic-brand peanuts @ $1.09
Meijer's wheat bread @ 59 cents

Results:
Total cost of brand-name items: $508.13
Minus total of coupon savings: -$65.57
Total brand-name cost: $442.56

Total of lowest-priced brand available of item with no coupon savings: $322.02

Difference: $120.54

Update!

A private investigator told the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information that terrorists are fraudulently redeeming supermarket coupons to finance their operations. He called for authorities to toughen coupon fraud laws. (UPI, 1998)

Feedback from Visitors

From Barbara McDonald:
You need to reexamine the coupon issue. Double- and triple-coupon redemption changes the equation considerably. Plus, on items for which there are plentiful coupons, it is often cheaper to buy several small containers than a single large.

From Sandra Poston:
I read your article on couponing and I feel that you are wrong. If you go to a discount store and you take your coupons, you can save a lot of money. At my grocery store Clorox 2 is almost $3 a box. At the local discount store it is only $2. With two 75-cent coupons I can get two boxes for the price of one. You also must remember that you did this experiment in 1979 they did not publish 75-cent and $1 coupons.

From Amber:
If you use coupons wisely and find the supermarkets that double them you can save money. It does take a lot of time. I shop at Ralph's every other day. Unless I have to buy diapers I usually spend no more than $30 a week to feed a family of three. The key is to stock up on the items when you feel they are at the best price. For example, in my freezer I have nine packages of the Lean Cuisine Skillet Sensations. By using coupons, I didn't pay more than 50 cents for each one.

From Gary Hughey:
There is two things you failed to consider in your experiment: Quality, and Taste. I for one would rather do without than to eat some of the generic and store
brands.

From Doug:
Not only do I feel that everyone who responded has overlooking the real experiment, they are awfully rude. I do all the shoping in my household and I save a lot by buying store brands. This is a simple experiment by an 11-year-old. Do people really need to vent just because their opinion is different? Grow up.

From Stewart Ugelow:
At the risk of complicating further an already thorny issue, I thought you'd like to know that many of the store brands are made by the brand-name manufacturers and in some cases (such as pasta) are often exactly the same. It's all part of a complex set of negotiations over stocking fees for new products (up to $25,000 per item per store allegedly) and the selling of shelf space (before meetings with grocery store executives, some manufacturers will take tape measures to the stores to make sure they're getting the space they've been promised). A site called the Supermarket Guru did an experiment similar to yours that compared the cost of buying "private label" store brands with name-brand products.

From M. Sparrow:
I use the ValuPage printout in conjuction with coupons I collect. And taking them to a store that doubles up to .50, I find that the coupons knock down the high prices on the Valupage list leaving me with Web Bucks I can save for future trips to the market. I was able to knock my $88 grocery bill down to $42. And if you look hard enough at coupons you can double you will find ways to buy items for free. I used 10 30-cent coupons to double on an item the store had on sale for .50, so each item I earned an extra .10. You may want to consider re-opening your research project so that when people check out your site for updates.

From Beth Clark:
My local grocery store doubles up to $1. Just this past week, they had 4 "tripler" coupons in their ads, also up to $1. On this last trip to the grocery store, my subtotal was $103. After my club card discount my subtotal was $90. And after all of my triple and double coupons, my total was $64. My husband calls me the coupon queen and gives me crap for cutting out coupons that we'll probably never use... but I don't care. For instance, we'd never buy Frusion yogurt drinks. But the week they were on sale for $1 and I had a 50-cent coupon which, when doubled, made the product free. If I hadn't cut that coupon, we'd never know how good Frusion was — although we still don't buy it. Just my two cents... or four, if you double.

From DJ:
I have always ended up with a smaller total grocery bill by shopping the store with the best prices and buying mostly the store brands. The reason big name products are priced as high as they are is to pay for massive national advertising campaigns. No-name or lesser known products are often just as good, and cost much less. I tried clipping coupons and found that as I checked each product, even with a double coupon savings, I'd do better to buy the store brand. And yes, much of the time the store brand is the national brand with a store label. For some products, where the quality of the national brand really is better, the price at my favorite store with single coupon value was still better than the higher priced grocery store with double coupon value. For example, Breyer's yogurt: 79 cents at the expensive store, with a 10-cent coupon doubled to 20 cents = 59 cents. At my favorite store, Breyers yogurt was 59 cents, minus the 10-cent coupon = 49 cents. For me, the bottom line is always the bottom line, so I tend to make my grocery list according to who has the best prices in their ads for certain items. Since all three stores that I'll even set foot in are very close to one another, I can buy the super sale items in all three, and the rest of my list in the store I normally shop, where the prices are consistently lowest.

From Punjabichick:
Coupons make brand-name foods much cheaper than the store brands. I am said to be the best coupon shopper around. Our grocery store did double up to $1 so my bill rang up as $327.68 then after I cashed in my coupons the store owed me almost $20 so I ended up getting a couple packs of laundry soap to balance it out. My average is about $200 each time I coupon shop and I don't pay for the majority of the food my family eats, including milk sometimes.