InComm Payments identified convenience, selection and availability of the desired brand as factors influencing where consumers buy closed-loop gift cards.
Convenience and assortment, with separately dated survey evidence
The findings, published on March 14, 2024, came from research conducted during 2023 with 6,475 gift card shopper respondents. Closed-loop cards refer to those redeemable with the named retailer or defined group of brands.
The company highlighted big-box stores, online channels and supermarkets among preferred buying locations, noting increasing interest in supermarkets.
Promotional communication formed a separate part of the research. Respondents identified email, in-store displays, online information and social media as places they preferred to learn about offers.
A later InComm report, published April 29, 2025 from research in 2024, gives numerical context for the convenience finding: 62% of open-loop shoppers and 59% of closed-loop shoppers cited convenience when describing what influenced their purchase intention. That report describes more than 6,400 shoppers overall. It is a separate later study, rather than additional data from the 6,475 respondents in the original 2023 research. [2]
Convenience remained a reported purchase motive in the later 2024 study
A separate later study quantifies the same retail-convenience argument.
% of respective shopper group
Tap or hover for details. All values are also available in the data table.
Source
Provider-published 2024 quarterly research, reported April 29, 2025, with more than 6,400 gift-card shoppers surveyed overall. Exact question-level bases, field dates, recruitment, weighting and uncertainty are not disclosed in the public summary. Historical self-reports, not October 2026 behaviour or a controlled test of a display or merchandising intervention. The two card-type groups may overlap. These are not results from the6,475-person2023 source or a before-and-after comparison.
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| Category | Reported survey result |
|---|---|
| Open-loop shoppers citing convenience | 62 % of respective shopper group |
| Closed-loop shoppers citing convenience | 59 % of respective shopper group |
For retailers, InComm’s recommendation joined assortment with visibility: shoppers need to find the brand they want at an accessible location, then understand the available promotion. The results concern reported shopper preferences and do not establish that any one channel guarantees higher sales.
Neither public summary provides the exact question-level sample, weighting or a controlled test of changing a store’s assortment. The two studies support an attributed account of shopper preferences; they do not show that a particular fixture or wider selection caused higher sales. [1] [2]
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Suzie Elis
Suzie Elis covers gift card products, digital gifting and distribution for Gift Card News.