Retail shopping paper coupons have never been a popular loyalty program or incentive to the South African consumer. South Africans, especially the mass black market have seen couponing as a chore more than an incentive,because one will not go back (take a taxi drive from thier home, which means paying more money just to redeem one item. Unless this happens to fall in the month’s grocery period.) However, online vouchers or couponing is changing all of that.
Not only is online vouchers a couponing system but it is also a referal system as well. Using a consumer’s unique voucher code, they can send the code to their friends and family to use the service or purchase a product and as a result get a discount voucher for themselves on their next purchase.
Convinience has played a major role in this regard, as one can do this via their mobile phone simply by forwarding a link, whever and whenever.
Recommendation is also a major player as one will not forward a service or product offering that they themselves do not believe in. This is actually a key insight as people usually want to be first in new news. Thus when your friends hear about a service or product from you, gives you some sort of acknoledgement.
Apps such as delivery and taxi services and online e-commerce sites have been the key driver of this.
In actual sense this is more of incentivising a recommendation, than rewarding a purchase.
