Costco’s core philosophy is to sell products at the lowest retail price while maintaining merchandise gross margins. To achieve this, Costco buyers negotiate the lowest net cost with all discounts factored into the cost of goods.

However, over the years, coupons have become key part of a Costco program. This has forced buyers to figure out how to balance the goal of negotiating a product’s lowest cost while also extracting marketing funds from suppliers to use in coupon books.

Costco’s Coupon History

After Costco merged with Price Club in 1993, the combined company faced weaker comparable sales, macro-economic issues and operational problems in combining two large organizations.

To increase sales, Costco introduced a coupon program in 1995 called the passport which offered larger than normal savings (15% to 20%) on an assortment of 80 to 90 in-club products.

1996 to 2008 – Costco’s coupon program evolved to include two coupon books. The programs ran for two to three months each and included both in-club and online items. The first coupon program began in January and was called the wallet and the second coupon program began in June and continued to be called the passport.

The coupon books were mailed to members (and handed out at the clubs) prior to the beginning of each program. In addition, Costco offered a smaller assortment of product coupons during and in between the wallet and passport programs.

2008 – Costco offered seven of these smaller assortment coupon books or MVMs (multi vendor mailers). Costco changed its coupon strategy and eliminated its passport and wallet programs in favor of its MVM program. Costco found that the sales impact from the wallet and passport programs lessened.

Learn More

To read more about Costco’s MVM coupon program as well as the coupon programs at BJ’s and Sam’s Club, download for free the Coupon Chapter from the 2024 Warehouse Club Industry Guide.