Benefits Of Voucher & Gift Card System For Small Business
People love to save money regardless of how small the saving is. This is one of the reasons why vouchers have gained immense popularity across the globe. Shoppers use shopping coupons, gift cards and online voucher codes on a regular basis to save a few bucks. Retailers have noticed the consumers’ love for coupons, vouchers & gift cards and hence use them to increase traffic to their stores and boost sales. The Right voucher management or gift card system enables retailers to reach more consumers, motivate existing customers to return to store and build credibility and reputation.
What are Retail Vouchers
A voucher is a bond of the redeemable transaction type that is worth a certain monetary value. A voucher can only be spent on specific goods or specific reasons. One of the most common types of vouchers today is the retail voucher. This is a voucher that will help you get money value, discount or credits when shopping in retail shops. They can also be used in online stores.
What are Gift Cards
According to Wikipedia description, Gift cards are cards with prepaid stored monetary value usually issued by a retailer or bank to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a particular store or related businesses. Gift cards are also given out by retailers and marketers as part of a promotion strategy, to entice the recipient to come in or return to the store, and at times such cards are called cash cards. As a matter of fact, you probably have used a retail voucher or a gift card at some point in time. These come in the form of a receipt, card or piece of paper that will give you some advantage in the purchase of goods and services. With e-vouchers & e-gift cards, you will be given a code which you enter when shopping online to get a certain value. Retail vouchers could be used in a specific outlet or in all outlets. The value you get is in the form of money value, discount or credits.
How do retail vouchers and gift cards benefit businesses & consumers?
Retailers use vouchers & cards for all manner of reasons. Below are some of the main ways in which they are used which benefits the consumer and retailer both:
Promote sales
The purpose of using vouchers or gift cards is to promote sales. Retailers understand that consumers love saving money. As a result, they use vouchers to drive sales. The voucher management or gift card system in this case is selected to come up with a product that will compel more consumers to consider a specific business and do business with it. Being able to save money during a purchase compels consumers to shop more. A voucher may be a discount voucher where as a gift card can be bought by a consumer to gift a friend without having to decide what product to buy for him/her.
- Build customer loyalty
Vouchers are also used to build customer loyalty. Once a customer is awarded with the retail voucher, he feels appreciated. This will in turn compel him or her to be a more loyal customer. Similarly a loyal customer of your brand may want to gift something from your brand to someone. A gift card acts as a good product to increase “word of mouth” branding and sales.
Draw attention to specific products
Vouchers can be tailored to draw consumers’ attention to a specific product. This works well when trying to increase the sale of a specific product or when introducing a new product. As aforementioned, shoppers love saving money.
Drive traffic to a specific outlet
When a new outlet has been introduced, retail vouchers or gift cards can be used to compel shoppers to shop in it. You can make them redeemable only in that outlet. Retail vouchers offer many benefits to both retailers and consumers. However, for the retailer to enjoy the most benefits, he must make sure that he is using a foolproof voucher management or gift card system. The wrong system will cause more problems than it solves.
Prem is the CEO of Inspire Pte Ltdand Inventrik Pte Ltd. He has over 40 years of experience in area of digital economy, digital commerce, retail , IT, Engineering and innovation with many prestigious local and multi-national companies and the companies he founded. He has helped over 100 companies with their digitalisation journey and has been invited to speak at many national & international forums.
