Groupon Gets Into Grocery Coupon Business

Groupon opened another front today, launching a test of its new grocery coupon program in the Boston area. The Big Y program uses supermarket loyalty cards to process the transaction.

In today's promotion, shoppers can get a $39.99 seafood grill pack for $24, with the prepaid deal loaded into their accounts and reflected at checkout, Advertising Age reported.

If successful, it would put Groupon into direct competition with existing grocery coupon companies, allowing it to offer deals on specific products as well as enabling big chains like Kroger and Safeway to syndicate deals across multiple brands and categories.

Using the supermarket loyalty cards eliminates the fraud problems that have kept some big coupon players from offering print-at-home Internet coupons.

The loyalty cards would also make it possible for supermarkets and brands to track how the Groupon deals affect buyer behavior – whether, in other words, they actually pay off, since they would be able to see if consumers continuing buying specific products when they're not offered as daily deals.