Coupon redemption rate flat

Coupon usage is something we would intuitively expect to increase when the economy slows, like Chapter 11 filings and private label sales. It's not happening -- at present, according to this report, it looks like there will be about 2.6 billion coupons redeemed this year, pretty much the same as 2007, which was the same as 2006.

The positive for the coupon people is that they were expecting significant declines, similar to previous years:

The soft economy has actually slowed the decline of coupon redemptions, breaking a long-term trend of declining response. Through 2006, coupon redemption declined about 5-7% annually.

Those 2.6 billion redemption come from 300 billion distributed. Seems awfully inefficient to me.