Setting Up Coupon Promotions

Oracle ATG Web Commerce treats coupons as a type of promotion (sometimes, coupons are referred to as “claimable promotions”). Coupons work as follows:

  1. Add the coupon in the form of a promotion to the Promotion repository, following the same general steps that you take when you create a regular promotion item (see Creating Promotions). You set up the discount as appropriate for the coupon. For example, if you wanted the coupon to give 20% off any order, you would specify Order Discount – Percent Off as the Item Type, and then specify 20 as the Discount Percentage. You would set up a simple Discount Rule that applies the discount to any order:

    Condition:
    Always
    Apply discount to:
    Order Total

  2. Add the coupon to the Gift Certificates and Coupons repository, associating it with the promotion you created in step 1. (The Gift Certificates and Coupons repository is part of the Claimable repository, which is described in the Configuring Commerce Services chapter in the ATG Commerce Programming Guide.) As part of this step, you also create a claim code for the coupon. For more information, see Adding a Coupon.

  3. The page or application developer then sets up a form field where customers can enter the code. For example, he or she might add a field on the Checkout page and give it a label that says “Enter any coupon codes here:”

    The developer then hooks this field up to the part of Oracle ATG Web Commerce that handles coupons (initially, the CouponFormHandler component).

  4. The page developer sets up an e-mail message (a JSP) to send to the customers you want to use the coupon. The message contains the claim code for the coupon as well as any additional text that you want to include. For information on setting up an e-mail message, see the Working with Targeted E-Mail chapter in the ATG Personalization Guide for Business Users.

  5. You define the list of people whom you want to receive the message (in other words, the people you want to be able to use the coupon). One way to do this is by creating and enabling a scenario containing elements that define the group of people who will receive the message, and a Send Email element that specifies the message to send. For more information, see Specifying the People Who Receive the Promotion.

When customers want to use the coupon, they do the following:

  1. They visit the Web site and order the products or services to which the coupon applies. During the ordering process, they type the coupon claim code in the appropriate field on the page (see step 3 above).

  2. Oracle ATG Web Commerce references both the coupon repository and the corresponding item in the Promotions repository to determine, for example, whether the claim code is valid and the amount or type of discount to apply.