Gift card popularity is key for UK fashion stores - report

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 5, 2018

Gift cards and vouchers remain hugely popular in the UK market with 73% of consumers buying them as presents and the average amount given on a card being £20. That’s according to a survey from Royal Mail that underline the importance of easy-to-buy gift cards for retailers in the fashion and beauty sector.

The survey of 2,000 UK consumers also showed that 76% of recipients spend the full amount on their card in one go and that the older consumers get, the more money they’re likely to spend on gift cards. Those aged 55 and over spend £23 on average while purchasers aged 18 to 24 spend £17.

And while ‘general retailers’ selling a wide variety of goods are the most popular destination for those buying gift cards and vouchers (39%), some 21% of gift card cash is spent with fashion retailers.

Clearly, the gift card buying habit is well established with UK shoppers, but it seems that recipients are in a gift card frame of mind too with 26% of consumers actually preferring to receive them rather than any other present.

Royal Mail sam that with the advent of the smartphone, digital vouchers and voucher sites have flourished, creating an integrated experience that makes it easy for customers to redeem their gift cards. 

In fact, while paper gift vouchers made up more than 30% of the market as recently as 2012, by 2017 this had dropped to 9% while digital vouchers had grown from almost nowhere to 9%. That leaves plastic gift cards, which can be easily redeemed in both physical stores and online, the most popular format for now.