Tracy Millett sorts through her coupons while shopping at Choice Grocery in Gulfport, Miss.

MCT / Tim Isbell

Cash-strapped Americans continue trading down on food and many other goods, buying cheaper, generic products, purchasing more items on sale and using more coupons, according to recent marketing surveys.

“Coupons are big motivators and businesses find that coupons really help bring in customers,” Marsha Strickhouser , a spokeswoman for coupon distributor Valpak, wrote in an e-mail to The Journal. “If you don’t know which pizza place to go to, and you get a coupon for $5 off, wouldn’t you call that pizza store?”

Coupon clipping began ticking upward as U.S. consumer prices surged and housing prices plummeted, according to marketers, as 89 percent of people surveyed in 2007 reported using coupons when they shop, up 3 percentage points from 86 percent in 2006.

Even more Americans clipped coupons last year, according to the Promotion Marketing Association’s Coupon Council, as 94 percent of those surveyed reporting they used the discounts.

The changes halted a decline in coupon redemptions stretching back to the early 1990s, according to Charles Brown, co-chairman of the Coupon Council.

“There’s an increased sensitivity to saving,” he said.Florida-based Valpak sends blue envelopes stuffed with coupons to about 45 million homes a year.

“Funny enough, no matter how many coupons/offers are in the envelope, our research shows that consumers flip through all of them to find out what’s in it for them,” Strickhouser said.

The number of people using Valpak coupons has increased about 10 percent, she said.

A wide range of businesses use coupons in their sales efforts, including such diverse enterprises as auto-related businesses, lawn-care companies and dentists. Restaurants accounted for the top three coupon categories, Valpak said.

Americans gobble up restaurant coupons, as 60 percent of consumers surveyed by Technomic last year said they use coupons “sometimes” or “all the time” at restaurants. Restaurant coupon redemption is fairly spread out among income brackets.

“If anything, more consumers in some of the higher annual household income brackets report using coupons at restaurants than do those in some of the lower brackets,” according to a Technomic report.

That’s true, generally, of all coupon categories, according to Brown, of the Coupon Council.

Broadening use has consumer-products companies rethinking their marketing strategies.

Proctor & Gamble, the largest U.S. advertiser, recently announced it was “shifting funds, where effective, to coupons and consumer promotions that deliver better value.”

P&G has been offering coupon booklets worth $120, or a $10 voucher, valid at Sam’s Club stores to customers who mail in receipts for more than $50 of Proctor & Gamble products.

Companies are also being smarter about how they hand out coupons, shortening redemption periods and requiring purchases of more than one item to qualify for the discounts, Brown said.

“A coupon is like printing money, it’s giving away cash,” he said.

The savings from redeeming coupons come with a psychic cost, according to one marketing survey. More than one in five consumers, or 22 percent, said they are self-conscious about redeeming coupons. But consumers seem to be getting over their skittishness, as nearly 57 percent of the survey respondents said they no longer care about appearances as long as they are saving money, according to ICOM Information & Communications.

“In a down economy, even the most stubborn consumers are receptive to money-saving efforts,” said Mark Hertenstein, of ICOM.

Studies of previous recessions show consumers are likely to remain receptive for months to come, Brown said.

“There’s a bit of a lag effect,” he said. “But eventually the marketer starts issuing more and more coupons and the consumers start to redeem them.”

The upturn lasts beyond end of recession, he said, “because it’s become part of the shopping behavior.”

Some places to find coupons:

www.coupons.com

www.couponcabin.com

www.couponcode.com

www.couponmom.com

www.couponmonth.com/pages/home.htm

www.8coupons.com

www.fatwallet.com

www.shortcuts.com

pgrimald@projo.com

(Correction: An earlier version of this story gave incorrect information on the percentage of people who use Valpak coupons.)