Generally, I hate receiving presents. Rarely is it something I want, because if I really wanted it, I would have already purchased it. If it’s not something I want (likely), then I have to deal with taking it back and trying to get something else (presuming I can take it back at all). If I can’t take it back, then while the thought was there, I’m just going to throw whatever it was away, or donate it to a thrift store. Why not just make contributions to an actual thrift store and cut me out as the middle man?
But the real question of the day is what marketing genius came up with gift cards? Because the $2.5 to $8 _billion_ dollars of unused gift cards (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/magazine/07wwln_freak.t.html ) shows that it clearly works out better for the merchant. If you’re going to give me a gift card, and I’m going to give you a gift card of equal value, why did we even bother? And if one of us gives a larger gift card, then the other person immediately looks cheap.
Long ago, if you didn’t know what to get someone, you could give them the thing that existed prior to gift cards – cash (or check). Cash is easy. It doesn’t expire, people tend to not lose it, it works everywhere, and it’s reusable. Instead, now people drive to a store, buy a gift card for some amount, and hand it to you. In theory it show some level of caring, since it’s at least from a store they think you’ll purchase from.
But it makes everything worse. Wildly less good than cash, since now I can only spend it in one place (if it’s even a chain that exists near my home at all). I have to keep track of the card until I’m in that store. Invariably I get back from a trip to the store, and see a gift card sitting at my desk and think, “drat!”. Most gift cards start losing value over time if you don’t use them, to the point that they’re eventually worthless. Since I need to spend at least that much at the store to get the value of the card, I’m also going to end up having to spend some of my own money along the way, since nothing is every _exactly_ what the value of the card is. And at the end it’s another piece of plastic that’s destined for a landfill.
Perhaps that’s why the results of one study (http://lifehacker.com/5717443/how-your-gifts-are-really-valued) shows that to the recipient, a gift card feels like its worth 18% less than its actual value (which is likely why 19% of them are never redeemed – you threw your money away). So in the end everyone loses.
Humbug.
Amazing how times change when i look back on things. Precisely to the above point, there are now gift card exchanges on-line where you can buy and sell gift cards.
Purchasing “used” gift cards can seen become a way of life, since they can give you 5%-20% off at major locations. I now regularly buy Subway gift cards. I regularly eat at Subway, and now I can do so at an 11% discount!