Survey: Gift card purchases to reach all-time highs

The National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts gift card spending will increase 4% this year over 2012. More than 80% of shoppers will spend an average of $163.16 on gift cards, up from the $156.86 they spent last year, according to the NRF’s Gift Card Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics.  If the results prove true, it will be the most spent on gift cards in the survey’s 11-year history, with U.S. gift card expenditures totaling $29.8 billion this year. Even better, 59.4% of those polled said they’d like to receive gift cards this year.

The survey polled 6,201 consumers from Nov. 1-7. It had a margin of error of 1.3%.