Coupon Redemption System

Abstract

A number of trends in e-commerce have become evident in recent years. Online storefronts have proliferated, and advertisements for these storefronts in the form of click through banners have become popular. Recently, the Internet has also become a distribution medium for conventional coupons. The customer prints out such coupons with his or her printer and redeems them like any other coupon. Although coupons are one of the most widely used forms of sales promotion, they suffer from a number of disadvantages. First, conventional distribution channels are slow and have long lead-times. Hence, distributing coupons requires much advance planning. Second, coupons were being redeemed multiple times by multiple people—sometimes well after the expiration dates. Coupons could be possibly redeemed by employees. Third, lower cost distribution channels such as newspapers do not lend themselves to precise targeting. . A new approach to redemption, however, offers a simple solution for ensuring that each offer is redeemed according to plan. According to our approach chain store owner can choose to generate coupons for a specific branch or branches. When customer prints the coupons, the customer’s name can be affixed to the coupon such that others cannot use the coupon. This way prevents store employees from redeeming the coupons. Store owner can choose to provision a limited number of coupons or to set the number of coupons to be distributed as unlimited. He or she can terminate the provisional coupon issuing instantly. In this new scenario, each promotional offer is assigned an authenticated coupon code. The code can be assigned specific parameters, such as one-time use, an expiration date and future activation. When a coupon or other promotion is redeemed, the coupon code is moved from active state to used state. Whenever a user tries to redeem the same coupon again, it checks in the database and whether the state of coupon is active or used.