How the Gift Card Programs of Retail Product Verticals Stack Up

The recently released 2023 Merchant Gift Card Omnicommerce Evaluation, Australia Edition, a comprehensive report produced by NAPCO Research in conjunction with sponsor partner Blackhawk Network, features an assessment of retailers’ e-commerce/digital, mobile, and in-store gift card offerings. The report seeks to provide an omnicommerce view into the consumer gift card purchase and recipient experience. The full report can be downloaded here.

One of the ways the data collected is evaluated and parsed is by average score for the nine different product verticals that encompass the 50 total retailers assessed. The average omnicommerce score across all product verticals was 63 percent — i.e., the retailers earned 63 percent of the available points for the omnicommerce criteria. Here’s a breakdown of overall performance YoY by vertical:

Looking to the Future

The 2023 assessment of gift card offerings across Australian merchants shows a number of steps in the right direction, but also some clear opportunities to elevate gift card programs to new heights, often with easily implementable actions. Here are a few steps that merchants can take to improve their omnicommerce gift card program:

1. Go the extra mile. As one of if not the highest margin items that merchants sell, going above and beyond to sharpen and streamline each element of the gift card purchase and recipient experience is likely to pay long-term dividends.
2. Generate incremental purchases. Australians spend on average 40 percent more than the face value of a gift card, making them a substantial driver of additional sales revenue.
3. Leverage supply chain disruption to your advantage. Recent McKinsey data states that 80 percent of Australian consumers have sought out different brands or retailers in the past 18 months, on the hunt for better value amid price hikes.

This is just a sampling of the valuable and practical information that's included in the full report. Download the 2023 Merchant Gift Card Omnicommerce Evaluation, Australia Edition today to get all the best practices as well as insights into how retailers' gift cards programs are trending year-over-year. This data can be leveraged to increase gift card sales, leading to an improved bottom line.