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Gifts: It's No Longer a Noun, It's a Verb - Gifting Gift Giving Is Enormously Important to Every Consumer Business The end-of-year two-month gift-giving shopping season accounts for nearly one-fourth of total annual sales among the class of GAFO retailers, which includes home furnishings and appliance retailers, clothing and accessories, sporting goods, hobby, book and music stores, general merchandisers, and other miscellaneous retailers such as office supply, stationers, florists, and gift stores. That totaled $211 billion last year. And that doesn't even include the regular, routine gift-giving that occurs throughout the year for birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, housewarmings and holiday occasions, such as Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Valentines Day, Easter. Because people always have and surely always will give gifts, the industry has simply taken gift giving for granted and built a $50+ billion industry on this assumption. But giftware companies and retailers are discovering that the consumer market is shifting. While gift companies and gift stores focus on finding and selling the next big gift item, consumers are choosing different kinds of gifts that they find in different kinds of stores. Do You Really Think You Are in the Gift Business? "Gift" It's No Longer a Noun, It's a Verb - "Gifting" But if you see your business delivering a wonderfully unique, emotional gift-giving ("gifting") experience to the recipient (the consumer), then you're on track to succeed in the 21st century. You've discovered "product is king" is a lie and what is really important is meeting the consumers' need and desire. Today our society is incredibly affluent with most consumers having all the material goods they could possibly need. As a result, when shoppers go to the store, they rarely are driven by a need to buy anything, rather their purchases are based upon a desire to achieve an experience or a feeling. Your gift business needs to recognize this new consumer paradigm and get on the experiential marketing bandwagon. The road to business success in the gift industry today is all about the consumer, anticipating their needs, satisfying their desires, fulfilling their dreams. Today, the products we sell are but a means to an end, and that end is a heightened experience...a good feeling ...a positive emotion that connects the gift giver and the gift recipient. Avoid Irrelevance — Learn What Drives Consumers in Gift Giving and Gift Shopping With the focus on gifting rather than the gift, Unity Marketing has undertaken a major research study of consumer gift-giving behavior that combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. Backed by the gift industry's most forward-thinking companies, including Department 56, Glass Baron, Lenox, Longaberger, and Walt Disney, among others, this research will provide a road map for the future of the giftware industry. Join Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, and author of Why People Buy Things They Don't Need (Ithaca, NY: Paramount Market Publishing, 2002), as she shares the latest consumer research on gifting. It will challenge all your basic assumptions about the gift industry. Learn what drives the gift giver in shopping and buying gifts. Discover how to tap into consumers' need for gifts in order to sell more of your company's or store's products. Get a view 'over the horizon' about where the gift-giving market is going and find out how to get out in front of the consumer. In this provocative session you'll be turned around 180° to look at your business from the consumers' perspective. Guaranteed to be eye-opening! |