Amazon to Offer $10 Gift Card for $5 Next Week
Amazon will use a two-for-one gift card offer next week to get consumers to check out AmazonLocal, its daily deals service.
On Tuesday, March 20, Amazon will let consumers buy a $10 gift card for $5. The catch: They have to go to amazonlocal.com to redeem it. The card is good for any Amazon merchandise, though. The retailer is limiting buys to one per customer.
Mike George, vice president of AmazonLocal, says the promotion is the most high-profile yet for the service, which launched last June in Boise, Idaho. AmazonLocal is now in 90 locations in 26 states and Washington, D.C.
Though others, including Facebook, have backed out of the daily deals category after it seemed to cool off last year, George says Amazon is applying its experience in the online retail space to the segment. “Some of our customers have up to a 17-year relationship with us,” he says. “Our job is to make sure they can make really informed purchase decisions.”
AmazonLocal isn’t the retailer’s only competitor in daily deals. Amazon has a stake in LivingSocial, the number two player in the category, next to Groupon. Last year, Amazon lent its considerable heft to LivingSocial for a similar deal, offering a $20 Amazon gift card for $10. LivingSocial sold more than 1 million of the vouchers and greatly increased its visibility.
That offer came after Groupon partnered with Gap in August 2010 for a deal that offered $50 in merchandise for $25.
