If you had a sneaking suspicion that adult children make FAR less effort with gifts for their Dads on Father’s Day than with their mothers on Mother’s Day when it comes to giving last-minute, don’t-have-to-be-there gifts, it’s official.

CashStar, a digital gifting and incentives company sampled 50 leading online retailers which use its platform for eGift Cards (electronic gift certificates).

In the four days leading up to Father’s Day last weekend on 20 June, sales of eGift Cards rocketed 234% over the four days prior to 16 June. What’s worse is that sales on Father’s Day itself shot up 183% over sales on Mother’s Day, and were 27% higher than on Christmas Day.

You can just see the forwarded email containg the purchased-at-last-minute panic electronic gift certificate, brimming with love, respect and admiration for the role their father plays in their life.

“Dear Dad,
here’s a gift certificate. Happy Father’s Day.
Hope you like it.”

I wonder how that makes their Dad feel…

Hmmm, I really debated about including this info…

Anyway, you know how some people are well, “shit” gift-givers – well it seems that singer Ke$ha is, as well, literally.

Anyone who she considers to have wronged her in some way can expect a nicely gift-wrapped piece of dog poo in the mail for Christmas. These charming little stink bombs are courtesy of the singer’s dogs, although whether the gifts are sent with the dogs’ permission is not known.

Ke$ha had no qualms spilling the beans about this, so to speak, and she admitted that she sometimes uses her music as retaliation towards other wrongdoers. It’s hard to decide which would be worse – to receive a box of doggie doo in the privacy of your own letterbox or to have your transgression recorded for public posterity in a song.

Ke$ha is a Pisces, with Mercury (communication) and Jupiter (optimism, generosity) in Pisces. Normally this would make you rather forgiving, sweet and compassionate and highly aware of karma - especially against wrong-doers.

Unfortunately she has Mars (anger, energy) in Taurus (nature) opposite Pluto (power, taboos) in Scorpio (sex, death, destruction). When someone gets on her bad side she goes well, ape-shit, taking the particularly revengeful route of sending dog poo which would be an upsetting and disgusting gift for anyone.  

Of course, there’s always a positive spin for everything, and perhaps we should be congratulating Ke$ha for switching to gifts that are environmentally-friendly, sustainable and green.

Or in this case, brown.

Popular culture stereotypically tells us that men are mostly given socks, ties and power tools for Father’s Day, but the U.S. retail industry couldn’t believe we’d all give something so boring(!), so since 2006, BIGResearch has been conducting its annual Father’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey (whew!) for the National Retail Federation.

The results of this five-year survey provide an interesting snapshot not just of Father’s Day shopping trends, but overall American consumer confidence.

Shifting trends in consumer activity at restaurants as well as online, clothing, electronics, discount and department stores have been painstakingly recorded and analysed by the survey, as well as the waxing and waning of popularity of such traditional gift categories as tools, sporting goods, books, clothing and electronics. The perennially popular old-fashioned greeting card was also subjected to the survey’s scrutiny.

In fact, it was the classic Father’s Day greeting card that scored highest across all five years of the survey, with between 65 and 70% of respondents indicating their intentions of buying at least one each year (a lot of people are cheapskates if that’s all they’re buying them).

And in spite of the GFC (Gotten Fresh out of Cash), people are still coming up with plenty of dollars to spend on Dad, averaging $94 per person in 2010 compared to $88 in 2006. The national totals are roughly parallel with this, with an estimated $9.8 billion being spent this year compared to only $8.2 billion in 2006.

Having said that, the GFC is possibly still making its presence felt, with over 34% of respondents shopping at discount stores this year compared to only 29% doing the same thing in 2006. While shopping at the big department stores sits roughly at 34% in 2010, this is only a rise of 2% from 2006. Online stores are increasing in popularity, with 20% of respondents making their purchases over the Internet, up from 15% in 2006.

According to the survey, clothing is still one of the most popular gift categories with almost 37% of respondents splashing out on those traditional undies, socks and ties (arghhh!). This figure has been fairly consistent over the five years of the survey, with 32% in 2006 being the lowest. However, less than 8% of respondents are buying these items from specialty clothing stores.

Those more stereotypical Fathers Day gifts such as power tools (17% in 2010), sporting goods (11%) and DIY equipment (also 11%) ranked surprisingly low, with little variation since 2006. Also surprising was the high ranking of eating out at restaurants to mark Fathers Day, scoring almost 40% this year and peaking at almost 43% in 2007.

And exactly who is giving all these goodies to whom? The survey tells us that 49% of people are shopping for their own fathers or stepfathers, but this is down from almost 57% in 2006.  (Does this mean more of the older fathers have died, or that fewer younger men are becoming fathers?)

The percentage of women buying for their own husbands is also down – 27% this year compared to 34% in 2006. Sons fared even lower, with roughly 7% receiving Fathers Day gifts from their parents across all years of the survey. Siblings don’t appear to be great Fathers Day gift buyers with between 4 and 5% of brothers receiving gifts, although grandfathers fared even worse, with only 3 – 4% of them having something to unwrap on Fathers Day. Surprisingly, this is even slightly lower than the proportion of people receiving Fathers Day gifts from their friends, which sits at 4 – 5%.

The world is getting a bit sad when more of your male friends get a Fathers Day gift than dear old GrandDad…

If you simply must have the latest iPhone 4, US retailer Radio Shack is offering a trade-in program that might prick up your ears…

Bring in an iPhone 3G 8GB or 16GB and Radio Shack will give you a $100 gift card, or if you have the fancier – but still of course, hopelessly out-of-date – 3GS 16GB or 32GB iPhone – and they’ll reward you with  a $200 gift card.

You can use this towards the new iPhone 4 model when it arrives on 24 June or, anything else in their store. If you are in the lucky, but unusual position of having two 3G or 3GS iPhones, you can keep one and trade in the other for gift cards that you can give to another for their birthday, or cash in for some type of techie gift.

The offer doesn’t extend to the original iPhone apparently and all trade-in models must be in good condition.

The Radio Shack offer runs until 25 July 2010.

I wish I’d known about this when I was hunting for a new mobile phone last Christmas!

Lots of companies are jumping on the rewards bandwagon to make it more attractive to switch providers.

TeleChoice, which is the number one Optus dealer offering the latest mobile phone, internet and telecommunications products, has 125 stores across Australia.  

Recognising that the telephony market is super-competitive, it provides its customers with an InCard which gives them discounts and rewards with hundreds of retail, leisure, sport and entertainment businesses.

Customers can use their InCard at stores such as Coles, Woolworths, Dan Murphy, Dick Smith, Thrifty, Hoyts, Espirit and many more, with discounts ranging from 5% up to 70% which could come in handy for gifts for yourself, or your friends and family.

Since the end of the financial year is only two weeks away, you might find it will really pay to upgrade your phone!

One of the most innovative ways to raise capital has been done by luxury UK chocolate retailer Hotel Chocolat. Rather than turning to big banks or angel investors to raise money for so they can expand (the stores – not the customers eating the chocolate),  they’ve come up with a brilliant out-of-the-(chocolate)-box idea.

Customers who buy GBP2,000 worth of Hotel Chocolat Chocolate Bonds receive six free tasting boxes a year of chocolate worth GBP107.70 as their dividend, while those who lash out on GBP4,000 worth of Chocolate Bonds receive a waist-expanding dozen tasting boxes worth GBP233.35 per year.

While money always trumps anything else, chocoholics who also consider themselves sweet on investing can use their tasteful chocolate dividends to thoughtfully dole out as indulgent gifts for themselves, or to receive as a regular emergency supply of gifts to keep on hand for birthdays, hostess, housewarming, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or Christmas gifts.

Can’t you just see the Taureans and Librans going mad for this one!

If you’re like the millions of people with an iPod, more recently an iPhone, and just perhaps, one of the lucky few with an iPad, you may have been surprised to receive an email telling you you’ve won a $50 gift certificate from iTunes.

 I have received two in the past week.

If you’re new enough you may wonder if it’s some clever marketing ploy from Apple to get you shopping at the Apps Store, but no.

It’s yet another dastardly scam from cyber criminals.

The email subject will say something like “Thank  you for buying iTune Gift Certificate”. Which is the first clue as you probably know you HAVEN’T bought a $50 gift certificate and as if Apple is handing them out for free. Harder to judge however if it’s your birthday.

You had me at “Hello”. Or rather, you didn’t as most market-leading online retailers can manage to use your name in the salutation.

Then it’s rather sparse copy, not warm and friendly like Apple tends to write which is the third clue.

Another clue it’s a scam is that it’s in text format, not HTML, with no logos or links to all the other Apple products or services.

And finally, if it is NOT the email you sign up to receive your latest iTunes announcements, it’s a scam…

New research has found that people who talk about their experiences are more popular than those who just talk about their “stuff”.

University of Colorado at Boulder psychology professor Leaf van Boven conducted a 10-year study into the social costs and benefits of pursuing happiness through experiences like attending concerts and travelling versus those who seek to be happy through material possessions such as exotic cars and expensive jewellery.

Not only do striving for material possessions make us less happy than the pursuit of life experiences, but it makes us less popular as well.

Van Boven and his colleagues interviewed undergraduates who were randomly paired with anothe student who talked about either a material possession or a life experience they had purchased and were happy with. After talking for 15-20 minutes, the undergraduates were asked about their conversation partner.

The undergraduates were less likely to like those who talked about material posessions than those who discussed an experience they’d paid for, such as travel, and less likely to want to befriend them.

Van Boven said that the students described those with the material posessions as selfish and self-centred while those who undertook experiences were seen as altruistic, friendly and outgoing.

In another experiment, simply learning that someone made a material purchase made them like them less than hearing about those who paid for an experience.

Hmmmm – this might be a GREAT article to show your Generation Z kids who are clamouring for the latest thing for their birthday or Christmas: tell them it won’t make ‘em popular!

Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites have made it possible for everyone to know about an amazing deal in your neck of the woods or your area of interest.

A number of US social media merchants have sprung up where merchants can entice new customers to try a new product, get an amazing deal on a close-out item or to be one of the first to trial a brand-new service.

The biggest and best-known are Groupon (which pays you $10 if you refer friends), LivingSocial, BuyWithMe and NimbleBuy.

You simply sign up with one or more of them to get daily emailed deals for your city (or for national and/or online-only deals).

Is there a catch? Natch. To make it worth the merchants’ while, they require a minimum number of customers to ”buy in” to the deal. So if you’re keen say to pick up a luxurious massage in Miami or a baby hamper in Baltimore for a ridiculously reduced price, you’ll need a number of others in your area wanting that same thing.

Which is where social media comes in. You Twitter it and/or facebook it like crazy to your mates and get them to pass the word on so you can all benefit from the low, low prices.

This could be great if you’re seeking some bargains on upcoming gifts for an anniversary, birthday, christening, engagement, Mothers’s Day, new baby or wedding gift.

What will they think of next?!

A New Jersey-based company called Cold Cuts Media has created a new iPhone/iPod application called REGIFT that will catalog the gifts you want to pass on. Since two in three adults have regifted at some time (I certainly have), this could prove very useful to keep out sticky social situations (such as eventually giving the gift back to the original gift-giver).

Costing just $0.99 from the ITunes App store, you can: track what you want to regift, take a shot of it, record who gave it to you, when and for what gift occasion, make notes on who NOT to give it to, categorise it, and then mark it off as “regifted” once you’ve rewrapped it and sent it on its merry way.

Just to make extra sure your regifting effort goes um, unnoticed, it even prompts you to check for receipts, engravings, cards or some other identifying factor that would indicate it had been originally given to you.

Perhaps this is one app that all couples should add to their wedding gift registry…