Combining Smart Shopping With Sustainability

A simple idea is taking off—pleasing German smart shoppers while displeasing regional newspapers that lose the attractive business of weekly print ads and retail flyers. German online shopping network KaufDA, offers digital flyers of all major retailers—shoppers just go to the homepage, and, based on their IP address, they can see all regional flyers at a glance.

Shoppers can easily:

  • Change the location and get the appropriate flyers
  • Sort flyers by channels and distribution
  • Sort by product category
  • Look for the nearest stores and have their special offers filtered by channel of distribution

KaufDA is also available as a free app for the iPhone and iPad.With its rapidly increasing penetration rate (current users: 5 million website and 200,000 app users) KaufDA is a pathfinder for digital information. On top of it all, they are also promotion sustainability: printed flyers account for 2.7 million trees cut each year, and a lot of energy is used for production and transport.

Shoppers can order a sticker for their mailbox that reads; No advertising – I protect our environment – I get information via www.kaufda.de.

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Each sticker saves a tree, the update on the number of trees already saved is communicated on the KaufDA Webpage—the objective is to save 1 million trees.

KaufDA is a great place for retailers who claim their support for sustainability to have a presence. I think this is a very smart and convenient solution that combines a shopper’s hunt for special offers with sustainability.

As more and more retailing moves to the digital space, by default becoming more eco-friendly, will the sustainable “pitch” from retailers like KaufDa still resonate with consumers as a credible effort towards sustainability, or will they simply view it as a byproduct of e-commerce?

– Contributed By Clarissa Dolff, Hamburg

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