Gift card exchange

Looking for gift items with high appeal, high turns and sell-throughs, a growing number of retailers are offering their customers gift cards.

Gift cards can make life so easy for those customers who just don't know what to get a loved one or friend. They are available in a range of denominations and for a large number of big name retail brands, such as Nordstrom, Old Navy, Borders, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Blockbuster and Starbucks, among others.

And now they also can be generic. Enter the My Choice card that allows recipients the flexibility to choose for themselves whose gift card they want. My Choice gift cards were a prominent component of the Valentine's Day promotional activity in Safeway stores last month. Under the promotion, My Choice card recipients need only bring the gift card to any Safeway store to redeem it for the gift card of the retailer of their choosing-any card or cards of equal value.

And that is an important benefit of the program for Safeway-it generates at least one additional shopping trip from the recipient, who has to come back to Safeway to exchange the card.

In addition, Safeway had an additional plan for motivating incremental purchases. What better way to present a card, the chain noted in its promotion, than to accessorize and personalize it with flowers, candy, stuffed animals and/or other items that shoppers could buy without leaving the store.