Fascinating new research has found that consumer confidence has been restored in gift card purchases, with consumer anxiety levels triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic taking on average six months to eradicate.
Blackhawk Network has released its latest EMEA Consumer Research Report 2021: How a pandemic changed the gift card industry, revealing that confidence is being restored, with the insight from 15,000 consumers across 14 European countries uncovers whether attitudes towards buying gift cards have changed during and post-pandemic.
Overall anxiety levels linked to the COVID-19 pandemic dropped significantly in just six months, from 82% to 52%. Meanwhile, only 21% feel anxious about buying a gift card due to the pandemic, down by 10% from January.
Last year, digital gift cards offered a convenient solution to gifting during lockdown, as Blackhawk Network found 59% of consumers bought a gift card online. Despite restrictions easing across EMEA and concerns over COVID-19 declining, consumers are still opting for this method. 70% of consumers purchasing a gift card this year did so online and of those, 38% said the reason for this was that they specifically wanted a digital card rather than a physical card.
67% of consumers expressed that they are interested in instant gifting, enabling them to immediately send a gift card via email or SMS. As well as this, the online world is opening the door to personalisation options that weren’t previously possible when buying in-store, generating further appeal. 79% cite the “ability to personalise my gift” as very important or quite important, the most popular options for personalisation were the ability to add a gift message, add a greetings card and customised imagery.
When it comes to buying gift cards as a present, the most popular reasons for purchases this year (January-June) were birthdays (70%), as a thank you (22%) and congratulations (19%). Interestingly, the research uncovers that 27% admitted to purchasing for self-use, with the main reasons cited being online shopping (61%), followed by a treat for myself (49%) and gaming credit (16%).
When looking at gift card purchases, be it buying as a gift or for self-use, 30% admitted to buying a gift card as a last-minute purchase, rather than planned purchase. Specifically, for last-minute purchases bought for self-use, 83% had purchased online, compared to just 31% who had made a purchase in-store.