E- coupons save money at retailers such as amazon.com!

Just as with many good things, paper coupons seem to be declining. They are being replaced with e-coupons and coupon codes!

For several years now, people have been able to save money at online retailers, such as amazon.com with coupons codes. When you shop online with amazon, you can use coupon codes, which are an electronic coupon. Simply find the item you want or need, see if its on sale on their website. Then, go an internet search for ‘amazon.com coupon code’. You can often find free shipping, percentages off, and other great deals that you can combine with the same price!

But now, grocery chains, food and drug manufacturers, and even coupon marketers themselves are going electronic. The concept is almost as simple as scissors and the Sunday paper: Visit a Web site, type in your loyalty codes, and find all the coupons waiting for you, electronically, at a store’s cash register or even on your cell phone.

The hope is that these electronic discounts will revive the dying coupon business. Only 0.5% of the 285 billion coupons issued last year were redeemed, according to coupon processor NCH, down from an average of 1% a decade ago.

Part of the problem is that newspaper readership is declining, so fewer people are looking at the Sunday circulars. The younger shoppers sought by marketers read their news online. And fewer people these days have time to clip, organize and sort coupons each week.

And since we all seem to have time to surf the Net and talk on our cell phones, these areas are where the industry is casting its net for savvy coupon clippers.

“We are committed to reaching our customers when and where they are most receptive,” says Jenifer Nunnelley, a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman.

Grocery giant Kroger, which owns Ralphs, King Soopers, City Market, Dillons, Smith’s Food & Drug Stores and eight other supermarket chains, has coupons from Procter & Gamble loaded on its store card.