OGDEN — E.K. Valentin doesn’t quite grasp the advantage to holiday gift cards over cash, but as a Weber State marketing professor, he felt bound to study them.
“They really don’t make sense from an economic standpoint,” Valentin said of gift cards. “You are trading a high degree of liquidity of cash for a more restricted gift card, which may have to be used at a specific store. Recipients can spend cash on anything they want, and givers save hours of shopping time — but noncash gifts remain the most popular because of their emotional and symbolic aspects.”
