Are you confused about what to give to your dear one as a gift If you don’t find any suitable option then gift card is the remaining one that suits everyone. Yah! you can give a gift card to anyone as gift without worrying about gender, age, relation etc. because it’s kind of giving the gift holder an opportunity to get what he/she wants.
Although gift card was introduced back in 1994 by Blockbuster but it got popular among us from 2001 right after Starbucks reintroduced gift cards to our modern society. Since then, gift cards became a part and parcel of our life.
In today’s world, gift card is not just a means of giving gift. Gift cards can be a way to show love to your dear one, it can be a way to show respect to your customers, it can be a way to make your employees happy or even it can be a way to save your money at the stores.
Despite using gift cards in our day to day life we might not know some surprising gift card facts that may keep your eye balls open! So, let’s get started…
1. Total market value of $160 Billion
Yes, that’s $160 Billion with big B! According to the statistic of 2015, people had spend more than 130 Billion on gift cards and this amount is going to be $160 Billion by 2018. That’s Incredible growth!
2. 1 Billion wasted every year
Sometime people do forget or lost their gift cards and hence those gift cards remain unused. This small mistake costs around 1 Billion every single year.
Pro tips: If someone give you a gift card and you think you don’t need that than sell the gift card rather than forgetting about it and turning it into a trash card.
3. Not Amazon or Walmart, it’s the restaurants
I am not sure about you, but most of the people do use gift card when they are in restaurants. Spending on restaurant based gift cards has a market share of 34.8% (the highest) where else departmental stores hold little bit less percentage and stands at 34.4% of entire market share of gift cards.
4. Digital gift cards are the future
Although the growth rate of gift card is stunning but maximum growth is can be noticed in digital gift cards. Digital gift cards are growing at 200% rate per year while physical gift cards are growing at only 6% per year.
5. Holiday = Gift Card
Around 73% gift card buyers spend on gift cards during holidays! It can be summer vacation, thanks giving ceremony, Christmas vacation or any other holiday.
6. Most popular holiday gift
For last 9 years in a row gift card is ranked No. 1 as most requested holiday gift item among family and friends.
7. $25 is the MAGIC!
25 happens to be a magic number for the productive people as its the base of Pomodoro technique, the most popular working method which consists of 25 minutes of separate working slots. However, 25 became the magic number in terms of gift cards as well, due to being affordable and reasonable $25 worth of gift cards have the highest purchase record so far.
8. Men spent more than women
According to the purchase record of last several years men spent $20 more on gift cards compared to women in average.
Gift card is not just a way of giving gift, sometimes it helps us to complete our mission within our budget. It may sounds weird, but nearly 6% people buy gift cards just to keep everything within their budget and to enjoy tension free holidays.
Soon, I will be adding more and more facts about gift cards. If you think these are cool enough to let others know then share it on social medias. In addition, let me know your opinion about gift cards via comment section.
