Grocery Shoppers with Gift Cards Prefer Online Rebates
Grocery shoppers with gift cards prefer larger online rebates over instant rewards at checkout, according to a new study from Blackhawk Engagement Solutions, a division of Blackhawk Network. The study also describes which mobile apps shoppers prefer when buying food and related products.
Blackhawk, a leading prepaid and payments provider, says that for gift cards worth $100, 69 percent of shoppers would prefer cards that offer a $20 rebate online while 31 percent prefer cards that offer an instant $10 rebate at checkout. For that same $100 gift card, 70 percent of shoppers prefer one that offers a $25 rebate online while 30 percent prefer a card that offers an instant $15 discount at checkout. Blackhawk based its study on a survey of 1,500 U.S. consumers.
“In a study last year, we found that the majority of consumers find gift cards to be the safest way to protect their identity and conduct online transactions,” says Rodney Mason, Blackhawk’s general vice president, strategy and marketing. “Our study also found that most consumers would consider exchanging gift cards they received for ones they want more, and would use exclusive values tied to gift card use.”
Consumers more often use debit and credit cards than gift cards when grocery shopping but trends are changing, he says. “As shoppers migrate to mobile for grocery shopping, gift cards will not only be digitally purchased more often, they will also be a part of the [in-store] transactions,” he says.
When it comes to mobile, grocery shoppers most often use the Amazon app when buying food and related products, with 71 percent of shoppers in the Blackhawk survey saying they use it. That’s followed by other, unspecified grocery store apps (28 percent) and apps from retail chains Walmart (26 percent) and Target (25 percent). Consumers could select more than one answer.
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