Real Life Research 1.1

Assignment#1: Real Life Research 1.1 Q. #1-3

A firm like Home Depot can benefit from using this information, but they would not necessarily use the same couponing strategies as Amazon.com. Home Depot has the advantage of a physical store, and sells very different types of products from Amazon. Certain incentives such as free shipping, such as the Amazon Prime service would not be as effective for Home Depot; Home Depot goods tend to be products that are not purchased with much less frequency than the wide range of products available on Amazon. Free shipping on paint and lawn movers for example is also not so useful when people can just go get it at the store and not have to wait. Therefore, Amazon’s strongest couponing strategy might be useless for Home Depot, but having a different type of strategy, according to the research, can convince consumers to spend more, be happier with their purchase and are more likely to return to the retailer again for future purchases. Thus, Home Depot would have many incentives to develop an effective couponing strategy. Also the research indicated that the return on investment is very high and 35 million people search for coupons monthly, which should further convince Home Depot to work on releasing more coupons.

Home Depot would need to conduct much more research before deciding on a strategy. They might need to start by finding their target market and obtain statistics on the type of consumer segment would purchase their products online versus their physical store. They should also consider whether these consumers will be swayed enough to shop online by the coupons. If certain products are seldom sold online, and certain products are often purchased online, it might make more sense to offer coupons only on the popular products. Trends with other online retailers that are successful in the same market should be analyzed as well. The research from Compete supports the success and use of coupons, but perhaps a store like Home...