This holiday season retailers are pulling out all the stops to get customers in their stores spending money. With reports that this year's economic slow down will result in lower sales this holiday season, retailers are offering huge discounts. These "Black Friday" and Cyber Monday discounts have extended into the early weeks of December and are expected to stick around motivating people to open their wallets. One trend that has surfaced and catching on is offering "free gift cards" with merchandise and gift card purchases. 

Gift cards, once used exclusively by big retailers, are now being offered by small and mid-sized businesses like beauty salons and spas. Long gone are the days of costly and time-consuming gift card implementation. Setting up a salon to offer and process gift cards today is affordable and easy with the help of a merchant services provider. The only requirement is having the correct point-of-sale equipment to process the cards. Once the gift card program has been implemented, salons and spas can start enticing their customers with "free gift cards".

There is a wide range of "free" value amounts I have seen. The most popular seem to be with every $100 spent, receive a $10.00 gift card or buy $50 worth of gift cards and receive a $5.00 gift card for free. This gift card tactic is a retailers dream. Think about it. This is the same as a 10% discount. We all love discounts, and are more inclined to buy something if there is some kind of discount, be it 10, 20, or even 50%. But when retailers give us a percentage off at the time of sale, the transaction is completed. There is no commitment for future spending. Which leads me to the beauty of gift cards. The retailers are getting you to spend money in their establishments right now, and most likely you will be back to spend your gift card (and possibly spend additional money) in the near future. Most gift cards are given as gifts, which gets additional customers in the door. If these customers have never visited your store before, even better, you may have just earned a repeat customer.

Salons and spas can really benefit from this gift card giving frenzy. Customers can buy $100 worth of products for the people on their holiday lists and receive a $10.00 gift card for free. This card can be used anyway they want. They can give the gift card as a gift, or they can keep it and pamper themselves after the stressful holiday season.