November is going on and the great holiday week is arriving within a few days. Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday are consecutive holidays in the current month while Christmas holidays are significant in December. With the onset of the holiday season, people tend to buy gift items to present others on various auspicious occasions and celebrate it with the great enthusiasms. Recent statistics indicate, “Average shoppers have purchased 14 gifts during 2016 holiday season.” Due to century-long traditions, people shop a lot and merchants offer hefty discounts or other incentives to attract holiday shoppers more. Therefore, National Retail Federation (NRF) has estimated $465 billion spending on holiday sales 2016 with an average of $700 per capita. It accounts nearly 30% total annual sales of the USA. Therefore, the retail industry in the USA is preparing huge for holiday sales and consider it as “Holy Bowl” to secure as much as possible during the holiday sales. Gifting Trends in Holiday Season With the advent of the Internet and mobile technologies, online shopping is gaining more grounds with the pace of time. People prefer less in-store shopping thanks to comfortable, quick, and comprehensive shopping experiences on the Internet. However, making a selection of a gift item for others is a big challenge in itself because the shopper has to put legs in someone else shoes and decide the likes and dislikes accordingly. Fortunately, the market has an awesome gifting solution, and it is a gift card or gift certificate, which receiver can redeem for an item of choice without relying on sender’s choice. It makes sender and receiver both happy, as well as a merchant who had generated the gift card! Therefore, according to Packaged Facts, a consumer research division of MarketResearch.com, American consumers have spent nearly $46 billion on Gift Cards over the year of 2016. Significance of Gift Card Trends for Shoppers In the year of 2016, according to the Packaged Facts data, Americans have spent $28 billion on shopping of gift cards as gifting item for others. $11 billion have spent on gift cards for self-gifting. $7 billion have spent on birthday gift cards. According to CNBC, gift cards are the most wanted holiday gifts in 2016-17. It has made gift card industry highly competitive, and shoppers have more options to use gift cards in personalized ways. Merchants are also offering deep incentives for gift card purchase and make it more lucrative for shoppers. How Could Gift Cards Be Shopper’s Delight in 2017? Physical gifts like clothes, electronic gadgets, beauty products, etc. are requiring packaging, shipping, and secure delivery to the recipients. Gift cards are digital products and could be sent via email or other digital routes within fractions of time. Therefore, online buyers are happy to purchase it even at the last moment of holiday occasion and please the recipients immediately. The delivery is instant and can be confirmed with emails or notifications on mobiles. Any merchant with gift card generating system can generate and make its products available through voucher card redeeming. Thus, receivers can buy a wide range of products easily. The majority of gift cards come with some marketing incentives like vouchers and discounts, so it makes an attractive deal for gift card shoppers and receivers when it is used by shoppers for self-gifting. The self-gifting purpose gift cards enable shoppers to manage their budgets smart ways. Since gift cards are refundable and can be canceled at any moment, shoppers consider it as the most secure gifting option. Want to leverage huge benefits of gift cards in holiday sales, there is some awesome gift card generating extension available in the market to reap the vouchers advantages along with branding and tons of benefits.
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