Only a little more than a quarter (26%) of executives from around the world expect the market for incentive merchandise to grow in the coming years.
That’s the key takeaway for promo pros from the Incentive Marketing Association’s most recent report, Incentive & Recognition Insights 2025.
- More than half (51%) anticipate incentive merch usage to remain the same and 23% expect a decline.
The report synthesizes insights from over 600 executives worldwide, offering comprehensive global benchmarks and trends for organizations looking to optimize their incentive and recognition strategies.
As part of the global report, nine exclusive studies were developed, providing domain and region-specific insights.
- This includes four geographic reports, covering North America, Latin America, Europe and Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
- There are also five industry reports – merchandise, gift cards, solution providers, travel and recognition professionals – tailored towards the perspective of each industry’s specific offerings, challenges and trends.
“I was struck by how aligned many of the trends were across all the reports, whether by region or sector,” says Fintan Connolly, consultant at Engage Loyalty, research chair and past president of IMA Global. “For example, the push toward more personalized, digital incentive programs came up everywhere, which tells me these are truly global shifts. At the same time, we saw unique nuances in each region, different popular reward types or local challenges, showing that local context still matters even as our industry becomes more globally unified.”
Fintan Connolly
Research Chair & Past President, IMA Global
Digging Into The Data
Although the merch-specific data isn’t encouraging, 86% of respondents rate their organization’s recent sentiment on incentive marketing as positive or very positive.
- Close to two-thirds (61%) expect growth for the incentive gift card market in the coming years, with 35% anticipating usage parity and only 4% foreseeing a decrease.
- Nearly half (46%) expect an increase in use of peer-to-peer rewards in the coming years, with 51% expecting usage parity and only 3% predicting a usage decrease.
In what is surely related to the merch-specific results, 83% expect macroeconomics to have a major or moderate impact on their future business, with driving factors like cost of living, recession and geopolitical uncertainty often mentioned.
- Although not specified in the executive summary of the report, the recent tariff turmoil seems likely to be a major factor in this statistic.
Meanwhile, 47% strongly agree that most of their clients are launching new initiatives, providing untapped business opportunities to the market. Furthermore, 58% consider their organization to be performing strong on winning new clients.
- On this subject, the biggest challenges mentioned are “competitive pricing,” “standing out” and “displacing incumbents.”
- More than a third (34%) expect client budgets for incentive marketing initiatives to increase in the coming year, with 58% expecting budget parity.
Nearly three quarters (72%) of respondents experience major or moderate business impact from government regulations, with data protection, tax and gift card laws being mentioned most often.
