Salt Lake City lags considerably behind other metropolitan markets when it comes to clipping grocery coupons, according to a recent Scarborough Research study.

While 40 percent of Milwaukee households and 38 percent of Rochester, New York households use grocery coupons at least once a week, only 17 percent of SLC households reported doing the same. Other markets with low penetration of grocery store coupons include Albuquerque, El Paso, Fresno, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Bakersfield.

While Sunday newspapers still dominate as the priority source for grocery coupons, 11 percent of the households in the national survey reported using the Internet as a source for such offers, up more than 83 percent since 2005. Scarborough regularly collects consumer data in 81 top-tier markets.

“With prices for consumer goods rising, we can only expect that a ‘good deal’ is of increasing importance to shoppers. Coupons are one of several economically-focused promotional tools that stores and product brands can use to get shoppers in the door and spending despite these uncertain economic times. And, the Internet provides an easy-to-use vehicle to search for coupons,” Alisa Joseph, Scarborough’s vice president for advertiser marketing services, says.

Scarborough’s study also found a solid link between Sunday newspaper readership and coupon usage. Nationally, Sunday newspaper readers are 15 percent more likely than all adults to use grocery coupons in their household. Not surprisingly, adults in leading coupon clipping market Milwaukee are 24 percent more likely to read the Sunday newspaper, and those in Rochester are 32 percent more likely to be readers of the Sunday paper. Sunday newspapers are known for being stuffed with coupons and advertising circulars. Milwaukee and Rochester’s newspaper audience penetration rates are at least two and a half times that of Salt Lake City’s.

Coupon users are covering all market categories including mass grocers such as SuperTarget, traditional grocers such as Smith’s, and warehouse clubs such as Sam’s Club. However, they are average for shopping at Wal-Mart Supercenter, the grocery store with the highest percentage of grocery shoppers nationally.

The Scarborough analysis also showed that households using coupons tend to spend slightly more money on groceries weekly ($114) as compared to the national average of $110. They are more likely than the average household to purchase a variety of grocery products across categories – from pantry staples like coffee and ready-to-eat cereal to health items such as yogurt and energy/nutrition bars.

In addition to Sunday newspapers and the Internet, other leading places for acquiring coupons include the mail (35 percent of households usually obtain coupons via the mail), in-store coupons (33 percent), preferred customer/loyalty cards (22 percent), in-store circulars (22 percent), weekday newspapers (17 percent), product packages (17 percent) and magazines (15 percent).