This particular usage of coupons could be assessed from two points of view, the person who is making the sale and the person who is buying it.

A normal usage of a coupon, would be to take it to the store and obtain discounts or offs on the particular product. In this sense, a coupon is equivalent to cash. When a  person uses a Rs.10 off coupon on a product, the cashier accepts the coupon as he would take cash.

Once the coupon becomes a part of the store, there is a whole process that has to be carried out until the store regains the 10 rupee that the coupon is worth for. Usually, the coupons are collected in a certain time frame and mailed to the manufacturer, whose details are printed on the back of the coupon, along with the condition that the company would re-imburse the said amount to the grocery store. Although this might seem like a simple affair on an individualistic scale, to put the same theory to a grocery store that collects thousands of such coupons would work out to be a real hassle. Although the whole logistics of coupon redemption seems antique in practice, they are still in existence due to the popularity of it among the customers.

The coupon is scanned by the cashier after the purchase. Although different stores have different methods and ways of processing the coupons, a general approach would be as follows. The coupons are added up, equating them to cash and this is added to the sale made for the day, so as to check whether the account tallies for the day. Then the coupons are mailed to the store’s headquarters, usually once a week.

On reaching the headquarters, a person in charge for the coupons, processes them. He puts together the bags of coupons, and mails them to a third-party clearing house.  The major hassle of the coupon lies in the work done at the third-party clearing house. The coupons are usually sorted by hand at the third party clearning house. There are exists a system by which the scannable undamaged coupons are placed along a conveyer belt which respectively reads it. The damaged, unscannable coupons are separated by hand and added separately. The final invoice with the total of the tallied amount is then sent to the manufacturer.

There is always the possibility of the occurrence of an error at any step during the separating and tallying process at the clearing house. The payment to the clearning house and the store could be done in two ways.

-          The manufacturer would pay back the clearinghouse according to the invoice and the clearing house would then pay the corresponding amounts to the respective stores

-          The clearing house could also be paid by the store.

There is the process or recounting usually done by the manufacturer, to avoid the possibility of a miscalculation.

The earliest case of the use of coupons was done by the Coco Cola company in the year 1887. As part of an advertising strategy, the coupons were distributed by the employees of the company to the public. This made it possible for every state in the USA to have a distribution record of Coco Cola.