Do Personalized Gift Cards Make Good Gifts?
Friday, December 26th, 2008
Is a Gift Card The Right Gift?
A very easy and quick way to give a somewhat personalized gift is to give a gift card to the recipient’s favorite online store. The recipient can pick out what they want at their leisure. Sounds good, but there is a problem: According to the report posted on TMG Strategies Blog, the average person has nearly 6 such gift cards that are unused! This is up from 3.7 unused cards in 2007. I have a theory as to the reason for the unused cards - Our world is faster paced, leaving little time for “extra activities” like redeeming a gift card. We are rushing off to work, running to meetings, taking our kids to school activities, downloading software, readjusting our retirement plans, paying our bills, getting our pets vaccinated, programming our remotes, etc., etc., etc. And it seems as we are given more technology, we are given more tasks to complete with that technology. It’s maddening!
Gift cards are nice, if you feel that the recipient has the time and motivation to actually use them. For example, I gave a gift card to my teenage son, knowing that he would use it to purchase downloaded music - And he did! Otherwise, if you feel the gift recipient may be too busy for such matters, perhaps a traditional gift is in order. And, if you want to give a gift that will have meaning for years to come, consider a personalized gift as featured at Shoppingmatchmaker.com.
