The cards we keep on giving: New survey confirms widespread gift card popularity

October 11, 2010 – CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. – Gift cards continue to be a top choice among companies for their recognition, incentive and corporate gifting programs, and now a new survey of advertising and promotional products leaders by National Gift Card Corp. (NGC) further confirms the popularity of gift cards for a wide variety of business purposes.

NGC, in cooperation with the Advertising Speciaity Institute (ASI), conducted the survey among more than 170 ASI distributors, including sales and marketing representatives, business owners, and corporate executives from the promotional products industry during a virtual trade show hosted by ASI last month.

Among the survey’s key findings:

• In an industry mainly focused on branded merchandise, nearly one-third (32%) of respondents surveyed currently purchase gift cards for their company and for their customers. In addition, 41% of those cards are co-branded or otherwise customized.

• Gift cards are being used to address a wide variety of business objectives. Asked to rate primary objectives to offer gift cards as incentives, the top five objectives were to recognize performance (20%), increase/maintain sales (16%), boost morale (12%), build employee loyalty (11%), and to start or maintain business relationships (10%).

• Prepaid cards, including Visa and American Express, and cards for dining/restaurants were ranked the most popular type of gift card (tied at 22%), followed by department stores (11%), electronics and office products (9%) and fuel and auto-related merchants (8%).

About National Gift Card Corp.: National Gift Card Corp. (NGC) is the leading marketer and supplier of gift cards for use in loyalty, incentive and rewards programs. The agency offers more than 175 major retail, restaurant and prepaid cards along with full-service marketing support, secure online ordering, distribution, fulfillment services and customized programs designed to reach each client’s specific objectives. NGC continues to develop innovative technology solutions and delivers the best value to its customers. National Gift Card is headquartered in Illinois with sales offices in Florida and California. To learn more about National Gift Card Corp., please visit http://www.ngc-group.com or call 888-472-8747.

About ASI: The Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) is the largest media and marketing organization serving the advertising specialty industry, with a membership of over 26,000 distributor firms (sellers) and supplier firms (manufacturers) of advertising specialties. Supplier firms use ASI print and electronic resources to market products to over 22,000 ASI distributor firms. Distributor firms use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain nearly every product in the industry from more than 3,500 reputable suppliers, to locate supplier firms and to market services to buyers. ASI provides catalogs, information directories, newsletters, magazines, websites and databases, and offers e-commerce, marketing and selling tools. Visit ASI online at http://www.asicentral.com.

About National Gift Card Corp.: National Gift Card Corp. (NGC) is the leading marketer and supplier of gift cards for use in loyalty, incentive and rewards programs. The agency offers more than 175 major retail, restaurant and prepaid cards along with full-service marketing support, secure online ordering, distribution, fulfillment services and customized programs designed to reach each client’s specific objectives. NGC continues to develop innovative technology solutions and delivers the best value to its customers. National Gift Card is headquartered in Illinois with sales offices in Florida and California. To learn more about National Gift Card Corp., please visit http://www.ngc-group.com or call 888-472-8747.

National Gift Card Corp.
800 McHenry Ave.
Crystal Lake, IL 60014
888-472-8747

This release was published on openPR.