Over 330 billion manufacturer paper coupons are issued in the US annually with almost 4 billion individual coupons redeemed by consumers. A coupon has an average face value of 84 cents. Over 100,000 US retail companies accept coupons at their individual store locations. Over $300 billion in coupons are circulated annually in the US. Coupons are legal tender in the US. The redemption process by which retailers are reimbursed by the manufacturer is outsourced to processing agents.
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Companies with U.P.C. Company Prefixes greater than 6-digits can no longer be uniquely identified at coupon processing points by scanning the coupon. |
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Until a new system is implemented, the cost and inaccuracy of redemption will continue to rise. |
The Joint Industry Coupon Committee (JICC) and solution partners assisted by GS1 US have developed the U.S. Coupon Application Guideline using RSS Expanded® Symbols.
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The draft guideline presents a new coupon system for use in the United States, which will initially be rolled out in the form of paper coupons. |
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This draft solution proposes a new coupon format with a larger number of fields (many of them optional) for specifying the more complex coupon offers in use today. |
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The new coupons will contain both the U.P.C. and GS1 DataBar (RSS) Expanded bar code, eventually moving to just the GS1 DataBar Expanded. |
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Since the GS1 Company Prefix is a globally recognized data structure, its use in the new structure provides a path for global users to adopt this coupon system if desired. |