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Not All Gift Cards Shared in 2010 Holiday Retail Bonanza |
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December 26th, 2010 By all reports the 2010 holiday season was a record breaker for retail sales. Gift cards have traditionally been a popular component of the year-end sales figures as people purchase huge numbers of them for stocking stuffers or as something easy to insert into Christmas cards. 2010 was no different than past holidays for the gift card business with the puzzling exception of a few sectors of the gift card market, which posted rather meager returns this season. In particular, surgical services cards such as Medigift Inc.'s iSpleen card, designed to take advantage of the booming health and wellness craze, faced real challenges at the cash register. The lack of public interest in giving the gift of say 15 or 25 dollars off of a splenectomy or similar procedure has marketers scratching their heads. Medigift's chief competitor BIFFMED, with their new appendecto ME card, also did poorly, although sales of a francophone version of the card, known as appendecto MOI, did surprisingly well in Quebec. At this point it is not known whether this is due to better focus group research analysis in that market or simply some sort of a reflection of the Canadian health care system. Also in this category was another poor performer, MediBifft's Decongest US card, good for $15 off a family-size bottle of nasal spray at participating Phleet Pharming pharmacies. Who wouldn't want this? Besides the medical services cards, there are two sectors that did huge volumes of business last year when they were first introduced, but took a pounding this year. Indeed, 2010 will probably go down in history as the year the bottom fell out of the so-called pest control gift card market as items such as the Vermin Begone! card failed to meet rosy sales projections. Shrill Whistle World's new card, which offers the lucky recipient a whopping $350 worth of high-pitched whistles designed especially for their 3-6 year olds, likewise failed to deliver expected sales this year. Marketers are speculating that perhaps these types of cards experienced a sort of holiday backlash as friends and family members who received these cards as presents last year may have felt that messages were being sent to them by the giver of the card that weren't entirely felicitous. Apparently they were able to register these sentiments to potential gift-buyers at the start of the 2010 season. |
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