Search

This paper empirically investigates using the e‐mail channel to target customers with a delayed incentive promotion—specifically, gift card promotion—and derives data‐driven e‐mail targeting policies. Gift card promotions are popular across retailers because they incentivize customers to spend more than a fixed expenditure level on regularly priced products by rewarding customers with a gift card to be redeemed against a future purchase. The e‐mail channel provides retailers with new sources of customer‐level data, which enables better prediction of customers' responsiveness to e‐mails (e.g., clicking) and the sales promotion that comes with it (e.g., participation in the promotion). We formulate the retailer's promotion e‐mail targeting problem by maximizing two objectives—the promotion's profitability (i.e., profit‐based targeting) and e‐mail click‐through rate (i.e., CTR‐based targeting). We also take into account the retailer's promotion budget and exclusivity concerns in targeting e‐mails. We use a comprehensive dataset from a Fortune 500 luxury fashion retailer's online channel and utilize both parametric and non‐parametric methods to predict customers' response to promotion e‐mails. Our data‐driven targeting policies improve the promotion's profitability by 5.57% and e‐mail CTR by 472.57%, on average, compared to our partner retailer's current e‐mail policy. We also find that the CTR‐based targeting policy lowers the promotion profitability by, on average, 9.09% compared to the profit‐based one. However, the CTR‐based policy recuperates the short‐term losses in the long‐term and increases the long‐term profitability by 3.94%, on average, compared to the profit‐based targeting policy.

Individuals regularly face stress, and the manner in which they cope with that stress is a crucial component in predicting stress recovery. While many engage in self-rewarding behaviors to feel better, these behaviors can come with a cost. The current study tested the effect of engaging in a different behavior after experiencing stress-prosocial behavior. Given the health benefits associated with giving to others, it is plausible that engaging in prosocial behavior is more successful in reducing the psychological and physiological responses to stress. To test this, participants underwent the Trier Social Stress Test and then either sent a gift card to a person of their choosing, received a gift card for themselves, or selected the more aesthetically pleasing gift card. Measures of self-reported mood, heart rate, blood pressure, salivary alpha-amylase, and cortisol were collected throughout the session. While the manipulation did not elicit differences in psychological or hormonal measures, the giving group showed a significantly greater downregulation of their heart rate, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure while recovering from the stressor. Additionally, those in the giving group who evidenced greater prosocial sentiment showed a larger reduction in diastolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure. A follow-up study suggested that these behaviors may be engaging different reward components, as those who gave a gift card reported greater "liking" while those who received a gift card reported greater "wanting". Overall, the findings show that engaging in prosocial behavior following a stressor can help to downregulate physiological stress responses.

Lack of food preparation knowledge, time to prepare meals and concerns about fruit and vegetable spoilage before consumption are the potential barriers to home cooking. These barriers may be addressed by meal kits (bundles of recipes and ingredients). We described home cooking barriers and evaluated acceptability of meal kits, using semi-structured focus groups with caregivers and adolescent patients of an outpatient paediatric weight management clinic. One meal kit per family, containing non-perishable food, a $20 gift card to a grocery store and recipes designed by clinic dietician for two meals, were given at clinic appointments. Two in-person semi-structured focus groups were conducted within 2 weeks of meal kit receipt. Four adolescent participants (75% female; 12.7 ± 0.9 years) and eight caregivers (88% female) participated in the focus groups. Four barriers to home cooking were identified: (a) healthy food cost, (b) preparation time, (c) food preparation knowledge and (d) picky eaters. Participants felt the meal kits addressed the time and lack of food preparation knowledge barriers to home cooking. A clinical meal kit programme was acceptable to a treatment-seeking adolescent population with obesity and their caregivers.

Employment in those with disability is an important rehabilitation goal, along with achieving some measure of functional independence and is at the same time one of the most difficult goals to achieve. The number of people with disabilities participating in adaptive sports has been increasing steadily over the years. A few studies have looked at the relationship between physical fitness and employment status in those with disability, but there have been no studies that focused on the results of organized adaptive sports events affecting employment outcome.To determine whether participation in the National Veterans Wheelchair Games (NVWG) has a positive impact on employment in those with disability.Prospective, cross-sectional survey.2015 NVWG in Dallas, Texas (nonclinic setting).A total of 338 survey participants; 36 surveys were excluded due to incompletion.Veterans who participated at the 2015 NVWG were given the opportunity to complete a 2-page survey. Survey participants received $5.00 gift card as compensation.Percentage of those who perceived NVWG made a difference in attaining employment, risk ratio analyses.A total of 50% of the participants stated that the NVWG made a difference in attaining employment. Those currently working were 1.5 times more likely to say that the NVWG had a positive effect on employment than those not currently working (P .01). Those who felt that the NVWG had a positive effect on employment attended 3-4 more wheelchair games on average than those reporting that the NVWG did not have an impact on employment (P.001). Positive responses were obtained from the Likert scale distribution.Our study suggests that participating in the NVWG provides psychosocial support to the veterans and may have a positive influence in employment outcomes.III.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board recently updated rules regarding revenue recognition, which includes the accounting for gift card and customer loyalty point “breakage.” Breakage is the number of gift cards sold or customer loyalty points that will remain unredeemed indefinitely. Until the recent change, some companies kept the liabilities on their records indefinitely, while other companies reduced the liabilities over time, which created inconsistencies between companies. This article provides an example and discusses the changes related to accounting for gift cards and customer loyalty programs. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

I. INTRODUCTION Firms that operate internationally often charge different prices for the same product in different countries. These price differences may be due to cost differences, exchange rate fluctuations, and/or price discrimination, where firms set prices based on consumers' willingness to pay for the product. There is an extensive literature on international price differences, but nearly all of this research has focused on physical goods, where arbitrage--the situation where someone buys the product from a low-price country and resells it to someone in a high-price country--tends to be relatively costly because of transaction costs (including search costs and transportation costs). There have been no empirical papers in the economics literature thus far on the arbitrage of downloadable goods. This paper looks at the case of iTunes, which sells downloadable music, videos, books, iPad and iPhone applications, and other content worldwide, and shows how the sale of iTunes gift cards above face value on the auction website eBay is linked to the arbitrage of iTunes' products. iTunes, which is operated by Apple, first started selling music downloads in 2003, and by 2008, it was the largest music retailer in the United States and the world, (1) People typically purchase products from their own country-specific iTunes stores, but not all content is available in all countries due in part to licensing restrictions and consumer preferences (e.g., iTunes does not sell music, movies, and TV shows in many countries). Prices also vary across countries, as detailed in Section III of this paper. One can easily switch to any other country's iTunes store with just a few mouse clicks--in particular, the U.S. store would seem to be a natural focal point, and it tends to have lower prices and a wider selection. However, in order to actually purchase something from the U.S. store, one needs to have either a U.S. credit card or a U.S. iTunes gift card, available in denominations ranging from $10 to $100 in the primary market through Apple and its authorized sellers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy. As such, it can be surmised that some individuals outside the United States may be willing to purchase iTunes gift cards on eBay in order to gain access to the U.S. store. (It should be noted that iTunes' terms and conditions specify that the U.S. store's products are available only to buyers in the United States.) We can see the evidence for this through the sale of iTunes gift cards on eBay. Nearly 200 iTunes gift cards are sold daily on eBay (about 10% of all gift cards), and more than half of these iTunes gift cards sell above face value, a phenomenon that is unusual among gift cards. After discussing some background information and related literature, this paper examines more than 1,300 eBay transactions in February 2011 and finds that iTunes gift cards targeted to international buyers (which are often sent electronically) are more likely to have higher prices, controlling for seller reputation, shipping charges, and other variables. This indicates that non-U.S. buyers are willing to pay a premium for the gift cards because they are unable to obtain them otherwise. Information about the buyers' countries allows us to see whether it is the U.S. store's greater product availability or its lower prices that buyers are interested in. This paper addresses an important issue because of the rising popularity of the sales of downloadable content worldwide; this market includes music, videos, books, video games, and applications. The Internet has also made it easier for buyers and sellers in different countries to find one another and in the case of digital products, exchange goods. If arbitrage is widespread, firms may decide to either minimize price differences between countries, stop selling in low-price countries altogether, or use the legal system or other methods to prevent arbitrage. In terms of the big picture, this issue has implications for social welfare, copyright enforcement and international trade policies, and governments in some countries may also be concerned if their citizens have access to goods that are banned. …

This study provides new insights into the meaning and value of gift cards in gift exchange among teenagers who gave and/or received gift cards during the Christmas/Hanukkah season. From their reflections of the reasons for giving gift cards and their feelings about receiving gift cards from others, the social roles played out in buying gift cards as a gift selection strategy are assessed and the values associated with gift cards explored. The results suggest that givers playing the roles of acknowledger and pleaser are heavy gift card givers when buying gifts for difficult recipients. Acknowledgers incorporate gift cards into existing strategies for gift selection (especially “settle,” “pawn off,” and “buy relationship affirming gifts”), but for pleasers, buying gift cards may be part of a new gift selection strategy—“play it safe.” Importantly, although gift cards can reflect economic, social, and functional value, the giving of gift cards seems to result in a new form of value for the recipients—the value of choice, which occurs when the control over gift selection is transferred from giver to receiver. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Gift card purchases have grown significantly in recent years. The growth has been attributed to recipients being able to make personal selections that best meet their needs while reducing the giver's risk of improper selection and wasted time. However, while gift cards have positive benefits for both giver and recipient, certain fees, and terms and conditions involved with their use and nonuse ultimately may impact the level of satisfaction derived. This paper provides background into the use of gift cards and the development of "open-loop" and "closed-loop" cards. Further, it examines current levels of legal protection afforded to consumers. The paper discusses how disclosure and notice, concepts intended to protect consumers, are often neglected or unusable because the actual party at risk is not the party with whom the purchase transaction was consummated. Implications are drawn for those who are charged with creating effective public policy and consumer affairs professionals who wish to provide assistance to both consumers and regulators. ********** Marketers and others have studied extensively disclosure of the risks associated with product purchases, both with a mind that better-informed consumers make better choices (Bettman 1975), and from a concern about the potential harm that results from an uninformed consumerate (Bloom 1989; Sexton 1981). Researchers have studied the form, vividness, and repetition of the message along with individual differences in receptiveness (cf. Argo and Main's [2004] meta-analysis of warning label effectiveness). Findings show that for information to be effectively communicated to consumers, it must be complete and relevant, and the consumer must be motivated to access the information and have the capacity to understand it (Milne, Culnan, and Greene 2006). The assumption is that the consumer with knowledge of potential problems will consider the risks and self-protect in accordance with their personal preferences (Beales, Craswell, and Salop 1981). There are occasions, however, when consumers may be unaware that they should engage in self-protection. Such may be the case when the risk is not to the purchaser but to someone who subsequently becomes the recipient of the purchase as in the case of a gift. Who bears the responsibility for communicating that risk if, in fact, it should be communicated to the eventual recipient of the purchase? This is an important question to address in examining the growing use of gift cards. These products have potential financial risks to the recipient; yet, the issue of whether recipients of gift cards, who are not party to the original purchase, can, and/or should, be afforded protection has not been discussed. This article argues that gift card recipients deserve special attention with respect to disclosure. It looks at the characteristics of gift cards and provides illustrative, though certainly not exhaustive, examples of current practice. Further, it suggests how public policy might aid consumers, consumer affairs professionals and card issuers by affording consumers additional protections while clarifying the legal ambiguities that concern retailers and other gift card issuers. BACKGROUND Though gift vouchers (certificates) have been available to retailers since early in the 20th century (Waits 1993), gift cards have, more recently, become ubiquitous, both in interpersonal gift giving and as consumer and corporate incentives. Estimates for sales in the United States reached as high as $70 billion for 2006 and $88 billion for 2007 (American Express 2006). Non-U.S. markets are demonstrating significant growth as well (Home, Craddock, and Norberg 2005). The rise in the popularity of gift cards stems from the purchasing consumer's ability to fulfill gifting obligations while conveniently reducing the risk of poor gift selection (Home and Kelly 1995). For recipients, the ability to select their own gift from a set of alternatives likely increases utility (Home, Craddock, and Norberg 2005) and reduces the deadweight loss of gifts that do not match the recipient's needs or desires (Waldfogel 1993). …

In three studies, we examine the mental accounting rules that govern how gift cards are used. We predicted that their identity as gift cards would shift consumption from utilitarian to hedonic goods even in contexts where both types of goods are available and the consumer's needs are unchanged. In Study 1a, participants were asked to imagine that they had both a gift card and a specified amount of cash and needed to purchase both a hedonic item and a utilitarian item. When asked which currency they would use to buy which item, respondents were significantly more likely to say they would use the gift card to buy the hedonic item. Study 1b replicated this result and found that it was tied to participants' beliefs how different types of money should be used. In Study 2, we found that participants who were required to spend a certain amount of their compensation in a laboratory store spent more on hedonic goods if their payment was in the form of a gift card. In Study 3, we analyzed transactions at a campus bookstore and found that shoppers tended to spend disproportionately on hedonic goods when using their gift cards than when making credit card purchases. Taken together, these studies indicate that people tend to assign the monetary value of a gift card to a hedonic mental account and spend it accordingly.