Product Gifting Trends: Wrap and Cards Lead the Week

The most gifted things in the world this week were not the gifts. They were the box, the card and the wrapping paper around them. Across shops worldwide, presentation sat right at the top of everything sent, ahead of necklaces, bouquets and books.

Cards alone landed in 13% of this week's gifting. Nobody needs one. Shoppers keep adding them anyway, because the gift is the excuse and the card is the message.

People will pay for the paper. It is the part of the gift the recipient sees first.

New baby gifts turned into keepsakes

New babies brought out the jewelry. Families sent matching pearl pieces to new mothers, and in Australia colleagues joined in on welcoming first children. Tiny storybooks and knitted things followed close behind.

New baby gifts held a tenth of all gifting this week, the same place they have kept all month. In the United States they ran stronger still, sitting third behind birthdays and just-because gifts.

The pattern matters for how an order arrives. When one order carries a gift for the parent and a gift for the baby, shoppers want to label each one separately rather than write a single note for both.

Books crept in beside the jewelry counters

Jewelry shops and food shops usually set the pace, and this week they did again. The surprise sat just below them: books turned up in 8% of gifting, level with bouquets from florists.

Geography shaped what went in the box. In the United Kingdom nearly seven in ten gifts were for a birthday, which is a lot of candles and a lot of cards. In the United States gifting spread wider, with new baby gifts and thank-you gifts taking real room beside the birthdays.

Notes left home in Spanish, Dutch, Arabic, French and Turkish this week, with shoppers in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands among the most active outside the English-speaking markets. Nearly six in ten gifts crossed a border.

What this means for merchants

If presentation is this close to the top of what people gift, it should not be hidden at the end of checkout. A gift option on the product page catches shoppers while they are still imagining the moment it opens, and a card field gives them somewhere to put the part they actually want to say.

For shops selling into several countries, the same logic applies to language. Gift options that appear in a shopper's own language, and per-item gifting for orders carrying more than one present, remove the small frictions that stop people from making a purchase into a gift.