Business buyers behind big boost in gift card marketplace
The B2B gift card market encompassing employee and sales incentives, together with customer loyalty programs continues to grow in size and popularity, reflecting ever-wider enthusiasm by recipients, according to the Incentive Gift Card Council (IGCC), a strategic industry group within the Incentive Marketing Association (IMA), which recently completed a new study of more than 1,100 U.S. businesspeople and their companies to get a pulse on the latest gift card spending habits and buying trends.
The research was conducted for the IGCC by the Incentive Research Foundation (IRF) and Aspect Market Intelligence.
Here are some highlights of the study:
The study found that 45% of companies are using gift cards as a reward, with the largest companies(more than $100 million annual revenue) using them at a rate of 56%.
Of companies using gift cards, most firms (67%) are using gift cards as employee incentives, followed by sales incentives (38%), customer rewards (30%) and eight percent allocated to channel incentives.
Researchers found that gift cards awarded as sales incentives carry the highest average value of $149, followed by channel incentives ($84), employee awards ($70), and customer rewards ($56).
Open loop gift cards “those issued by banks and credit card companies which can be redeemed virtually everywhere" dominate the types of gift cards businesses are purchasing for incentive and loyalty rewards, varying from 56% to 62%, with the largest companies purchasing the majority of open loop cards.
As for closed loop gift cards "those issued by a particular business redeemable at only their physical locations and websites," respondents chose their top 10 favorites,
leading with food & beverage cards, and followed by department stores, exclusive online retailers, music and movies, fuel, electronics, sporting
goods, apparel shops, travel, and jewelry and accessories.
For a look at the entire research report, please visit www.theirf.org.
