Apparently the recession has led to a decrease in deliberate coupon misredemption and a corresponding increase in regular 'honest' coupon use by us price-conscious Brits. According to the 2008 CCB fast.MAP Marketing GAP research (thanks to the ISP for alerting me to this - see www.isp.org.uk for the whole shebang), only 38% of consumers now 'sometimes' misredeem coupons (down from 43% last year). Only 38%. Phew - that's a relief. ................................................................................................................................................... I'm being facetious, of course. The figures suggest (if we can believe what people tell the men in white coats) that the vast majority of coupons are correctly redeemed. Indeed only 6% of 'users' confess to being habitual misredeemers. In any event, this aspect of coupon (mis)use has never particularly fazed me - even if misredemption ran at 50% it's still a remarkably cheap way of getting an incentive to consumers en masse, and with reasonable degrees of targeting. It's very, very cheap compared to indiscriminate discounting. A whacking 37% say they'll use a lowly 20p coupon (most people would pocket an abandoned 20p coin), which probably costs only a few pence more when you factor in the misredeemers. Compare that to the crippling marketing cost of a bogof or a twofer. ................................................................................................................................................... I've seen convincing research that coupons can make a significant difference to household penetration levels (one US study of four major fmcg brands indicated a 60% higher level for couponed households), but the main flaw in the couponing argument concerns established brands with already high penetration levels... aren't you just paying people to do what they were going to do anyway? There's no easy answer to this, unless you value each 'next purchase' as the first in a long line that may otherwise have died out. And maybe that is a philosophy which it is more than ever appropriate to adopt - or at least since the last proper recession.