GiftCard Partners Blog

With the weather getting warmer and gas prices on the decline, more people are thinking about their vehicles. This has AutoZone gearing up for the spring selling season in a big way. In anticipation of their busiest season yet, AutoZone is hiring
10,000 additional employees through April. The leading retailer and distributor of automotive replacement parts and accessories in the United States has shown incredible growth and stability, especially since their recent rebranding and increase in the number of mega-hubs. With over 5,100 locations, AutoZone has also pledged to hire more than 20,000 transitioning service members and military veterans by 2020.  Since last year, more than 4,600 current and prior U.S. Military Service Members have already been hired.  AutoZone continues to secure its long-time place in the automotive replacement parts market. With most American adults both needing to own and maintain a vehicle as well as the deep affinity many consumers have for fixing and enhancing their own vehicles, AutoZone is the perfect destination for everyone.

Gift cards are becoming an increasingly popular choice for motivating Millennials (we recently wrote about their preference for e-gifting) and according to a report from the NPD Group and UPenn's Wharton School, gift cards are quite popular with the 18 to 34-year-old crowd. The report studies consumer behavior in the retail industry and how the landscape is changing with new technology. The study looked at retail trends across the generations: Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials.

Customers love loyalty programs. This is a long-standing tradition and has only evolved with new technologies. Many times loyalty programs are tailored to each store’s primary audience to both increase engagement and for customer retention. They bridge the relationship between the retailer and the consumer shopping/buying process. Now it’s time for organizations to leverage loyalty programs. A recent infographic by Selfstartr showed how loyalty programs are on the rise. The average number of loyalty programs per household was up 13.3% in 2015, increasing from 10.9% in 2014, and they are even popular with affluent shoppers.

The only thing constant in the B2B gift card market is that it’s constantly evolving. This can leave retailers scrambling to keep up with the flow and not get left behind. One such evolution is digital gift card growth in the B2B market. Retailers are taking a closer look at the effect this growth in digital has on the bottom line of their B2B gift card program.

In the tenth edition of Forrester Research’s “State of Online Retailing” report, we learned something profound about how our shopping has evolved. For the first time, smartphones drive retail sales, surpassing computers and tablets in online shopping dollars. Not only have tablets fallen off as a sales driver, but they have also found a new, innovative home in a different corner of the retail cycle.