COUPON CLIPPING: NICKLE HERE, QUARTER THERE CAN ADD UP TO BIG SAVINGS AT GROCERY STORES, RESTAURANTS

Cheryl Hendricks loves to save money. Thirty cents here, a dollar there add up to big savings in the family budget and a surplus of household necessities.

Hendricks, like hundreds of thousands of other people nationwide, is a coupon shopper.

"My husband says I'm going to go broke saving money," she said. "But it really does save money if you go about it right."

Like most hard-core coupon shoppers, Hendricks has a method. She buys the Sunday edition of the St. Louis Post Dispatch for all the coupons packed inside, clips coupons from the local newspaper, follows sale advertisements from local grocery stores and collects coupons delivered bulk-rate in the mail.

"I have two boxes," Hendricks explains. "One is for household items like detergents, deodorant, cleaning supplies and toothpaste.

"The other box is for food items, categorized into groups like breads, meats, soda, frozen foods and breakfast cereals," she continued. "Then, I try to arrange my coupons in the order of the way the items are found in my favorite grocery stores. That makes it easier to find things and makes me less apt to miss anything."

Although the Cape Girardeau woman doesn't use coupons all the time, Hendricks said she watches store ads closely, and checks sale items against her coupon inventory.

"Sometimes you can get things practically for free," she said. "If a new item is already marked down by the store and they double coupons, you end up paying 15 or 20 cents for the item."

One advent she particularly looks out for is double-coupon week at Venture.

"They will double everything up to 50 cents, and will give you 50 cents beyond any coupons worth more than that," Hendricks said. "It's a good opportunity to stock up on things like toothpaste, detergents and other household items."

But one thing smart shoppers have to keep in mind, she said, is base prices.

"If the base price of an item is cheaper at Wal-Mart with just a regular 40-cent coupon than it would be at Venture with double coupons, then I'll go and buy it at Wal-Mart.

"You have to watch to know if you're really going to save money and what a good price is by shopping around."

Hendricks also will try new products with large-value coupons which often accompany the mass marketing of the product.

"A lot of times, a store will mark new items down to get people to try them anyway," she said. "If you have a dollar-off coupon to go with that, you can try something new for a small amount of money."

Coupon-clipping is something Hendricks does in her spare time. She will not rush to a store to use a coupon that is about to expire.

"It takes time but it's worth it in the long run," she said. "You really can save a lot of money.

"It's almost like a little game. Each time you see how much you can save buying things you need anyway."

Coupon shopping has become a way of life for many Americans, and an advertising vehicle for manufacturers.

In the competitive atmosphere of the today's retail market, coupons are a device to lure shoppers to purchase one brand over another, says Burt Kellerman, a professor of marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.

"Coupons fall under sales promotions for businesses," he said. "Companies try to sell their product through the use of coupons as an added incentive for purchasing a specific brand.

"In fact, coupons are growing relative to advertising in terms of emphasis in the marketplace," he said.

Another use of coupons is evident in some checkout lanes. Machines hooked into the cash register will read a certain brand of dog food or orange juice the consumer purchased, and at the end of the sale, print a coupon for another brand of dog food or orange juice.

"This takes care of one of the problems manufacturers face in the marketplace getting the right coupons to the right group," Kellerman said. "The cash register tells the coupon machine what the person is buying; it's very specific."

But Kellerman said there can be some drawbacks to coupon shopping as well.

"Some people end up spending more money than they would have in a regular shopping trip to purchase items on which they can save money," he said. "That is when the system works against itself for the consumer.

"Consumers should know when and how to properly use coupons to maximize savings and buy products they truly want and need," he said.

The vehicles of coupon-delivery are somewhat limited at this time, Kellerman said.

"Obviously one of the most effective coupon-delivery systems is newspapers and periodicals," Kellerman said. "Now manufacturers have begun to stick coupons right on the outside of the product, which can be used immediately at checkout.

"Radio and television can not yet share in the coupon market, although Pizza Hut successfully tried a few years back," he said.

Pizza Hut told people in television and radio advertisements to write "Large for the price of Medium" on a sheet of paper and bring it into the store to serve as a coupon.

"In the future, we might be able to push a button and print a coupon out near our television set," Kellerman said.

"Coupons are certainly big business."

Irvin Landewee, major advertising accounts manager at the Southeast Missourian newspaper, believes coupons sell newspapers.

In an effort to build larger Sunday circulation, the Southeast Missourian has been distributing slick, "free-standing inserts" in its Sunday edition for a few weeks.

The Missourian carries two types of inserts: Quad Marketing Inserts and Product Movers Inserts, Landewee said.

"The Quad Marketing Inserts consist of national coupons of mainly grocery items and things like toothpaste, deodorant and tissue," he said. "The Product Movers have mail-in offers and rebates, and advertises items otherwise not available in stores."

These inserts are pre-printed and merely added to the Sunday edition.

Beginning Oct. 2, the Missourian will publish the total amount of savings consumers will be able to get with the coupons in the following day's newspaper.

"A lot of stores offer double coupons now, which makes many of them worth even more to consumers," Landewee said. "The coupons carried in the Sunday paper will be good at any grocery store, which makes the paper itself even more valuable to the consumer and subscriber."

Free-standing inserts will be available only in subscribers' papers or papers sold on the racks, not in the free Missourian Plus edition.