BERLIN: Four in ten German online consumers have used a coupon website and more than half expect to do so in the future according to a new survey which also says that coupons help acquire new customers and increase sales.

Research company Ipsos polled 1,002 internet users for deals.com, a coupon website, to produce an oversight of the online couponing market and the savings behaviour of online shoppers in Germany.

It found that eight in ten searched online for coupons or offers as part of their purchase process. For some, this aspect was a crucial factor: more than one third (36%) were looking for coupons even before they knew exactly what they were going to buy, and for those that did know some (15%) would choose not to buy if they couldn't find a matching coupon.

The study highlighted the potential for coupons in customer acquisition and conversion. For 47% of respondents a matching voucher could act as an incentive to buy from a new store or a new brand, while a similar proportion (46%) said they had bought more than they originally intended in order to reach the minimum order value required by a voucher.

The most popular type of offer consumers were looking for was a straightforward discount, cited by 41% of respondents. A percentage discount (25%) and free shipping (20%) were the other most sought-after options.

Volume discounts (4%), giveaways (3%) and new customer benefits (3%), however, attracted little interest.

The fashion industry has been one of the main beneficiaries of the trend to couponing in Germany, with usage up 17 percentage points in the past year. Fully 47% of consumers using vouchers had applied them to clothing purchases and 33% to shoes and accessories.

CDs, DVDs and books (37%) were the other category to feature strongly in the past year while the electronics industry was set for increased usage during the rest of 2014.

Data sourced from Presseportal; additional content by Warc staff