{"id":478,"date":"2009-11-20T20:46:27","date_gmt":"2009-11-20T20:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=478"},"modified":"2010-04-06T21:30:23","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T21:30:23","slug":"gift-cards-just-cant-get-a-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=478","title":{"rendered":"Gift Cards Just Can&#8217;t Get a Break"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Tower Group\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wishtv.com\/dpp\/money\/business_news\/sour-outlook-for-holiday-gift-cards-ap-1258729497931\">expects gift card sales<\/a> to drop 7% from last years sales, which are down from 2008 levels. Even the National Retail Federation\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrf.com\/modules.php?name=News&amp;op=viewlive&amp;sp_id=831\">reports<\/a> that gift card spending will drop this holiday season. Most commonly cited reason: gift cards are too impersonal.<\/p>\n<p>And the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine (among many others) feature articles (<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748703811604574530041007151468.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\">WSJ<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/money.blogs.time.com\/2009\/11\/19\/cash-the-perfect-gift\/\">Time<\/a>) that advocate giving cash instead of gift cards. Have gift cards peaked? Are consumes getting smarter?<\/p>\n<p>Strangely though, Canadians seem to be\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.canada.com\/life\/More+Canadians+give+gift+cards+this+Christmas+Study\/2233795\/story.html\">giving more gift cards than ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Tower Group\u00a0expects gift card sales to drop 7% from last years sales, which are down from 2008 levels. Even the National Retail Federation\u00a0reports that gift card spending will drop this holiday season. Most commonly cited reason: gift cards are too impersonal. And the Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine (among many others) feature articles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions\/667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}