During the 2003 Christmas holiday season, 53% of large retailers in Canada offered gift cards to their customers, but only two years later, according to Statistics Canada, during last year's Christmas holiday season, eight out of every 10 (82%) of Canada's largest retailers offered the gift card option.
The retailers included Canada's largest food, clothing, home furnishings, electronics, sporting goods and general merchandise categories (including department stores).
Surprisingly, the biggest increase in the proportion of stores offering gift cards occurred in the trade groups that were slowest to introduce them: clothing stores, which include shoes and accessories, supermarkets and other stores, such as pharmacies and book stores.
Clothing stores offering gift cards showed the biggest gain. In 2003, 36% of them offered cards, but by 2005 that figure more than doubled to 79%.
The proportion of supermarkets also jumped from 57% in 2003 to 70% in 2005.
However, clothing stores and supermarkets still lag behind home electronics and appliances stores, all of which offered gift cards in 2005.