A survey on electronic coupons

Coupons are a highly effective marketing tool. With coupons, merchants can achieve customer loyalty or attract new customers, and customers can obtain benefits when purchasing goods or services. As the Internet becomes easier and faster to use, electronic coupons (e-coupons) are becoming an increasingly popular way of providing customers with discounts or gifts to incentivize the purchase of some products. Therefore, this use of coupons is considered to be a win-win application. This article analyzes the work of researchers toward solving the challenges associated with e-coupons in the area of promotional schemes. This work focuses on defining the actors and processes involved in the life cycle of e-coupons, as well as analyzing the security and functional requirements that proposed approaches meet. A very important part of the analysis reveals that the definition, features and requirements of e-coupons must be clearly defined to provide researchers with a tool enabling a homogeneous comparison of solutions. We also provide a critical review of previous solutions, in which we suggest their advantages and problems, and we discuss some open opportunities for researchers in the e-coupon field.