Coupons.com Buys Grocery IQ
Apples in the produce aisle? Of course. But soon shoppers will get both groceries and coupons on their Apples — iPhones, that is — thanks to the purchase by online coupon portal Coupons.com of Grocery IQ, one of the most popular iPhone apps in the lifestyle category.
The acquisition from developer Free State Labs for an undisclosed sum offers the first entry point into the mobile coupon market for Coupons Inc. To date, the company has offered printable coupons over its Web site, which receives 12 million unique visits a month for downloaded discounts from brands like General Mills, Kraft Foods and Johnson & Johnson.
Grocery IQ lets users compile and share shopping lists, and comes pre-loaded with more than 130,000 name-brand supermarket items, customizable by product and package size. For example, a user can specify not just Heinz Tomato Ketchup, but the spicy, reduced-sugar, no-salt or fridge-door-fit varieties — and in a range of sizes from 14 oz. to 114 oz.
Once the Coupons Inc. integration is complete, the new iPhone link should let users start getting brand- and location-specific coupons based on the lists they compile and the favorites they store on the Grocery IQ app. Version 2.0 of the app will be a free upgrade; new users will pay 99 cents in the iTunes App Store.
“We saw a very popular iPhone app that looked just like one we’d design for ourselves, so we acquired the assets,” says Coupons Inc. CEO Steven Boal. “It’s an example of how we think grocery couponing will develop over the next few years.”
Users will have three ways to redeem the iPhone coupons at first: by displaying them at the checkout counter, by credit to their supermarket loyalty account, and by printing them from an e-mail inbox. Among its grocery retailer clients, Coupons Inc. has a relationship with Kroger, which has run tests of loyalty-card redemption of mobile coupons.
Coupons Inc. plans to expand the Grocery IQ user base with a version for Android smartphones later this year.
