Member Article

Corporate sector fuels gift card and voucher industry

The UK’s gift card and voucher industry has experienced solid growth in the third quarter of 2011, according to new statistics from The UK Gift Card & Voucher Association.

Driving growth is the corporate sector, as the business-to-business market was reported to have grown 11% during Q3, particularly online, where like-for-like sales were up by 400% during this same period.

Sales via gift card centres were up 50%, and similarly sales of vouchers by agents made continued gains, rising by 24.7%.

Consumer sales growth was shown to have slowed at 3.8%, and direct sales via stores had increased only marginally.

Andrew Johnson, director-general of the UKGCVA, commented: “Despite the challenging economic climate, the corporate sector has played a starring role in this last quarter in terms of growth in the UK gift card and voucher sector, with business-to-business sales increasing by a healthy 11%.

“Not only are these figures especially impressive given the tough underlying market conditions for corporates, but they also help to highlight the growing trend for businesses to use gift cards and vouchers as a flexible and desirable way of recognising their employees, partners and customers.”

The report was compiled independently by consultants at Ernst & Young, and has also revealed that corporate direct sales remain the largest channel for vouchers, partly due to the growing trend for modern businesses to invest in voucher schemes as part of their incentive programmes.

Overall, UK gift cards and vouchers present a £4 billion market, and these latest statistics present a third successive period of substantial growth in the industry.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .