TM1 said:Beboparoo said:PromoMagazine Link

sadly, that article is more than 2 years old. I don't care on a personal level, it is isn't my site, I am just showing reasons why FW might not want to go down the selling road.

I understand, but unfortunely it's been more than two years since Bud Miller updated cents-off.

Most serious couponers don't have a specific need in mind when they use the GC forums. They're looking to minimize out of pocket costs so that means looking at bargains at stores as a whole. To break categories down into the minutiae is overkill. So looking for a categorized deal on orange juice isn't something that most of the people using the GC forum will be doing 99% of the time.

The folks using the GC forum will be looking for deals in which they can stock up while they are in a particular store or find deals which produce overage situations which can be applied to other items in their grocery order.

For instance, many people don't search CVS threads for specific items. They are, however, searching for the items that are free after ECB and can be used with the $ off $$ coupons which result in overage. Ask most of the folks who are serious about CVS shopping and they'll have 30 to 40 tubes of toothpaste stockpiled. It's not that they wanted toothpaste, it's that the toothpaste was free and resulted in overage that allowed them to buy other items for free or very little out of pocket.

Having the store categories allows deals to be put together for the minimum out of pocket expenditure for the fewest trips to the store. If the categories were listed by products, it would be almost impossible to put together deals and it would frustrate most of the serious couponers.

I'm thinking that JayK and Bebop are thinking of two different things.

It seems that JayK is talking about multiple ways of searching the forum, like you can in the HotDeal forum in modern view. That everythign will be there, but you can search by store, by item, by category, etc. You are able to search whatever way you want.

It seems that Bebop is thinking about the actual listings, not taking into account how the modern view works in Hot Deals and applying that to Grocery Forum?

I could be wrong, so correct me if I am.

And the other problem that I see with listing categories is getting people to list products by categories. I know that I sure am not going to list the prices for orange juice at Publix, Target, Kroger, WalMart, etc. each week and I doubt that many others (any besides jayK, that is ) will either.

That's where the search feature comes in handy. If you want to see if anyone has listed that there's a sale on orange juice for a particular week, you do a search.

DevilMonkey said:TM1 said:Do you shop with a list and then drive around trying to decide what store you you are going to shop at? I still think someone new to coupons will find it easier to see the specific store they shop at listed - Food Lion - and then look at categories withing Food Lion.

I think it'd be a lot more efficient to search by store.

However, if a gallon of milk runs 30 dollars in six months, you might take a special trip to Harris Teeter or Rite-Aid for a good deal. Assuming the gas prices at $35/gal don't make it prohibitive.

Searching by product lets noobs (like me) get started. It'd be your job to teach them how to be more efficient with their research/planning!

Maybe instead of an overwhelming list of every conceivable grocery product, there were instead simpler categories which covered staple foods? Meat, for instance, is worth a special trip to me if there's a good enough deal somewhere. Milk, eggs, baby food/formula, etc?

Just thinking out loud...again.

I wouldn't think the categories had to be in depth.

Meat
Produce
Dairy
household goods (like cleansers, papertowels, toilet paper)
beverages
general groceries

with categories added as needed?

For instance, that would have helped me when I was shopping for making tacos for cinco de mayo. I wanted the cheapest place to get hamburger, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and taco sauce for 40 kids.

But for everyday kinds of grocery shopping, I'd probably search by stores. Just when I'm buying a huge amount for something specific like that, every penny counts.

linrick said:
as far as trading/buying/selling coupons, let's not. what people want to do behind fw is their business. . just don't come back to fw and complaint about a deal gone sour. Personally, I agree with this. As someone else mentioned (TM maybe?), if you allow selling/trading, you are going to be getting all kinds of scam artists setting up shop here. Plus the headaches of having to deal with trades/sales gone bad would be detrimental to community building. And if you allowed that in grocery coupons, now you are going to have people wanting it in every forum which would open the community up to even MORE spam/scammers.

When I first joined here, I did a behind the scenes sale of a deal I got in on but another member didn't. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done that. But at no time did I think that FW encouraged that or would have thought to hold FW liable should something go wrong. BTW, I don't remember who I sold that truck set to, but I still have that $2 bill he sent me.

Regarding categorization:

I agree that for product categorization, subcategories are probably not necessary and might not add a whole lot of value. Sticking to just the product category list in the OP should be fine, with the addition of a household goods category. For categories that could go either way (i.e. Health & Beauty, or Pets), why not list topics assigned to those categories in both HD and GC?

For store categorization, if there aren't a huge number of grocery retailers then a flat list should be fine. If that list gets too long, perhaps it could be divided into regions, i.e. Online, National, Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, West, etc. Many grocery stores operate in a limited number of states, so there shouldn't be too many stores listed in more than one regional category.

There is also a third "type" dimension to a topic that could be useful: whether the topic is a deal, a discussion, or an informational post. The magnitude of the deal could potentially be captured in this dimension - as linrick mentioned, perhaps deals with significant savings could be categorized with a different type than a run-of-the-mill deal. Another "type" could be coupon exchange - all offers/discussion/complaining re coupon trades could be confined to this category, which could easily be excluded.

Having these three dimensions would give users a huge amount of flexibility as to which topics they want to see (or not see). For example, you could set your view to show only deals (ignoring discussions) on all products, at national and northeast stores. Or you could see all deals and discussions on household goods at national and online stores. The key to making this work (as discussed in the finance categorization thread) would be allowing exclusions, and letting both the community and the OP categorize topics.

linrick said:shopliftinginva said:BTW, I don't remember who I sold that truck set to, but I still have that $2 bill he sent me.you know what you can do w/that $2 bill right ?

btw, i think that gc deals should be limited to "really great deals" such as far, almost far (like hd forum), or a significant savings of $2+ to make it worthwhile. if people start posting stuff like 10 for $10, etc. (which all grocery stores have practically every week anyway), it will get too cluttered. It's legit. He sent that because Jefferson is on the bill and I live in Jefferson's hometown.

I currently have a bunch of 3x5 cards inside of a checkbook cover to separate my coupons. My ghetto coupon system goes like this: air fresheners, bakery/baking products, canned foods, cereal & pasta, cleaning supplies (including dishwashing liquid), condiments (including spaghetti sauce and butter), frozen foods, health & medicine, juice & soda, laundry detergent & fabric softeners, meat, oral & body hygiene, paper tissue, snacks, storage & waste bags (including aluminum foil, saran wrap), and miscellaneous. If you could make the GC Forum like that, then it will be easy for me to find and file coupons like 40-cents off 5 cans of Del Monte corn.