As noted earlier, many companies are being more strategic in targeting their sampling programs.
In the case of coupons, retailers must bundle the redeemed coupons together and ship them to a
processing point. Many times, coupons are not validated at the point of purchase; fraudulent
redemption costs marketers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Fraud can take other forms
as well. For example, during the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast PepsiCo launched a joint promotion
with Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Apple planned to give away 100 million songs for free (regular
price: $0.99); consumers could obtain a code from the caps of Pepsi bottles and enter the code
online to qualify for the download. The promotion was designed so that anyone purchasing a
bottle of Pepsi had a one-in-three chance of being a winner. However, many people discovered
that by tilting the bottles to one side they could tell whether the bottle was a winner. Moreover,
they could read the code without having to pay for the Pepsi