Gift Card Spending to Push Holiday Sales Into January: Pitney Bowes
Heightened gift-card giving due to shipping-delay concerns will extend the holiday shipping season into January, said Pitney Bowes Monday. A third of shoppers responding to a survey of over 2,000 consumers in the past month said they prefer sending and…
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receiving gift cards, up from a year ago. “Those waiting until the last minute to shop are likely to be impacted most by inventory shortages and shipping delays and will probably also turn to gift cards to finish their shopping,” said Vijay Ramachandran, Pitney Bowes' vice president-market strategy for global e-commerce. Millennials drive gift card spending across most product categories, representing 37% of dollars spent, it said. General merchandise store brands like Amazon, Walmart and Target rank at the top for gift card popularity and spending, with 74% of shoppers saying they have purchased such a card, spending an average $56.90. Some 58% of consumers who receive a gift card plan to spend it within days or a few weeks after the holiday, it said. More than half have already started holiday shopping; 46% are nearly finished, it said. Consumers will do most of their holiday shopping in the next three weeks, with 63% planning to finish online shopping by Dec. 13. Black Friday has become a top cyber event with 78% saying they will do their holiday deal hunting online, though most expect Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals to last through the season. A third plan to shop the high-profile days more than last year.