I guess sa amerika uso ang rebates specially on holidays!!! And sometimes, you can get the stuffs for free because of stacking rebates!

Rebate and Coupon Heaven ang Amerika hehe
When I visited my Sis in NJ, nung naggrocery kami dami nya coupons dinala haha

Companies utilize rebates not just for promotion or sales but to generate more income.  Most of the consumers usually buy items because of the rebates however, when the time comes to process the rebates, the consumers either are way too lazy to finalize the whole deal (filling up the forms, registrations, mailiing), or have completely forgotten about it until the rebate date has passed.  Either way, the companies make use of the money they get even when they return it back to the consumers. 

Yung coupons naman, most of them are tied up to a specific store where you can redeem them.  It's one way of generating interest to a certain store.  Consumers don't normally go to a store and buy one item.  It's always a lot of things and often times, not all of the items have coupons.