Another familiar example of hurdle pricing involves coupons for
discounts at grocery stores. Many households receive grocery-store flyers
in the mail every week. Many people ignore grocery store coupons
because they can’t be bothered to look through them and clip out their
chosen ones. Other people take the time to either clip the physical
coupons or load coupons onto their electronic store loyalty card or app.
In this setting, the price discrimination is between those people who can’t
be bothered to deal with the coupons (less elastic demand) and those
people who care enough about the discounts to use the coupons (more
elastic demand). Everyone is presented with the option between higher
prices and lower prices, and the hurdle of using coupons is designed to
have people assign themselves to the two market segments.
