• by Erik Sass , March 11, 2008

Some of the country's leading packaged-goods companies are teaming up with Kroger, the national supermarket chain, to test a system for distributing electronic coupons to mobile devices. The test campaign, based on Cellfire's technology for managing shopping lists on mobile devices, will target 25- to-34-year-olds with coupons for home and baby-care products from Clorox, Del Monte, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, and Procter & Gamble.

The system for redeeming the electronic coupons is a bit different from traditional clip-and-save paper coupons--and, marketers hope, simpler. Using Cellfire, the consumer surveys available discounted goods on their mobile device and composes a list of items they want to buy. Cellfire then communicates the list to Kroger, which automatically deducts the discount from the price at the cash register.

To participate in the paperless coupon test, the consumer must be a member of Kroger's loyalty-card program, which tracks purchases and provides a wealth of information to Kroger and marketers about the individual consumer's needs and preferences. Typically, these loyalty-card programs identify shoppers through numbers only, guaranteeing a degree of anonymity. The number is also a login for Kroger's Web site, where members can create online shopping lists.

Like other supermarket chains and retailers, Kroger has been distributing electronic coupons on its Web site for some time. However, it hopes the mobile campaign will reach users who don't read the newspaper or visit the Kroger Web site frequently.

The Kroger test is not the first such mobile discount campaign from a major supermarket chain.

Earlier this year, ShopRite said it is testing a new customer loyalty program designed in partnership with MediaCart Holdings and Microsoft. While not called a "coupon" promotion, Microsoft will track individual purchases and deliver discounts via MediaCart, which installs small computers with digital displays in shopping carts.

Both the Kroger and ShopRite systems could potentially make Internet advertising more efficient, by allowing marketers to compare online ad exposure with later purchase patterns.

That could be a boon to packaged-goods companies in particular, which were tweaked by Forrester Research in a recent study for failing to use the Internet as a brand advertising medium. A separate study of mobile commerce from Juniper Research predicted that 208 million mobile users will make 2.6 billion ticket transactions worth $87 billion by 2011, indicating a growing affinity for some types of mobile commerce.