What Is the Giving Economy for Retailers in 2026?

What if your customers wanted to support your business before they even made their next purchase? In the giving economy, shoppers help retailers stay resilient by buying now through gift cards or optional tips, even when the value is redeemed later. This article explains how the giving economy works in retail, why it matters, and how you can turn customer goodwill into practical support.

A gift economy is a system where goods and services are exchanged without expectation of immediate return, focusing on relationship-building and community bonds. In response to brands at risk of closing permanently during the early COVID-19 period, customers chose to directly support them, creating a modern gift-economy movement. In retail, that same logic shows up when customers spend now to help a business survive and redeem value later. This form of consumer support can be understood as a movement of consumer generosity, and it often appears through direct tips to retailers or gift card purchases that keep cash flowing into the business for future use.

The concept has deep roots in anthropological studies, notably Marcel Mauss's research on gift exchange systems. Traditional gift economies have existed in societies like the Trobriand Islands and Pacific Northwest tribes through practices like Potlatch ceremonies. Today, similar principles can also be seen in open-source software communities like Linux and Wikipedia, where contributions create ongoing community relationships.

Below, you'll find what the gift economy means in retail, how buying behavior shifted during the pandemic period, and which tools brands can use to turn customer goodwill into practical support.

Why the gift economy matters

During the early COVID-19 period, many retailers faced temporary closures and severe cash-flow pressure. Cash reserves vary widely by retailer size and market, so it's better to avoid relying on a fixed unsourced buffer estimate here.

This remarkable essay by Gabrielle Hamilton in The New York Times, detailing the closure of her decades-open restaurant Prune, provides insight into her emotional decision to shutter the business. Former customers calling up Prune on its last night open in March to place orders they'll never get signals both how important physical spaces are to communities, and how support does not and will not occur in isolation.

The story of struggle became more common during the pandemic. For many businesses around the world, temporary store closures and service interruptions lasted for months, further depleting their ability to operate normally and increasing the risk of permanent closure.

That pressure helps explain why the giving economy became so visible in retail: it gave customers a practical way to support the brands they valued when normal buying patterns were disrupted.

Gift Economy Mechanisms in Retail

In the earliest days of the pandemic, many businesses shifted online or made their online stores their primary means of business. It served as a way for customers to still shop and provide revenue for the brand.

Still, businesses had to keep up with the fast-paced shift from in-person to online buying: in 2024, about 78% of Canadians were projected to shop online. During the early pandemic period, grocery ecommerce also expanded as more households bought essentials online.

Food and beverage store sales were up 28.0% year over year in March 2020. Shoppers continue to expect flexible fulfillment options such as self-checkout, local delivery, and pickup, and retailers keep adapting their operations across channels, as reflected in ongoing U.S. Census ecommerce reporting:

• self-checkout
• contactless local delivery
• local pickup
• robotics
• virtual reality

Gift cards support cash flow in the giving economy

One way customers have been supporting brands is through the purchase of gift cards. Gift card purchases can help keep businesses afloat by bringing in cash before products or services are redeemed.

At Shopify, data shows that from March 1, 2020 to April 20, 2020, merchants sold more than $13 million worth of gift cards. After Shopify launched gift cards on March 20, 2020, the number of shops selling a gift card for the first time reached an all-time high and stayed above Black Friday Cyber Monday levels for a sustained period.

Customers purchasing gift cards from their favorite brands let them put revenue back into the business and preserve the amount of the gift card for a future date for in-store or online purchases. This creates ongoing relationships and community ties, as customers maintain connections with businesses through future redemption opportunities. In practice, some merchants have extended this idea beyond standard gift cards into social gifting: Soup Stock Tokyo, for example, used a Shopify app to quickly launch a service that let customers send gifts by LINE or email without needing the recipient's physical address, helping the brand adapt as traditional gifting occasions declined (source).

In April 2020, Instagram announced gift card, food order, and fundraiser tools for businesses to help generate income during the crisis. Today, the broader lesson still applies: social platforms can help businesses surface support options where customers already spend time.

Tipping creates another way to participate

Another way buyers are supporting brands is through tipping. During the pandemic, some service workers created virtual tip jars using payment apps and shared lists of accounts so customers could support them directly.

Tipping, like how it's long worked in restaurants and driving services, is similar to crowdfunding on Kickstarter and related platforms. Shopify merchants can offer customers a tip option during online checkout.

On Shopify, customers can add optional tips during checkout. This differs from traditional transactional commerce by emphasizing relationship-building over simple profit maximization, creating social bonds between customers and businesses.

It's important to note that some customers were the ones who began asking businesses if they had a tipping option as a way to reinforce loyalty to their favorite brands.

Industry-Specific Applications

Depending on the retailer and the market segment, tipping might be a new source of income for a retailer or its employees. Tipping already feels familiar to many customers in online ordering and service-based purchases, but it does not fit every business equally well.

Customer-service businesses can gain meaningful support from their communities through tipping and gift cards.

Food

Food and beverage is one of the most familiar segments for tipping, so customers may be more comfortable with it there than in other retail categories. The majority of customers are already familiar with this process when they go to restaurants or order takeaway.

For many customers, adding a tip to an online meal order feels as natural as tipping in person. For food delivery services, in the same way that rideshare services like Uber or Lyft ask for a tip at the end of a ride, restaurant delivery services like Uber Eats or Postmates also present tipping as a standard part of checkout or post-purchase flow.

Some food and beverage apps also built mobile tipping into their ordering experience during the pandemic period. Food and beverage retailers on Shopify have seen the most in terms of tipping, and this isn't restricted to familiar household-name brands.

While big food retailers or franchises have long had this option, smaller or direct-to-consumer brands can also use tipping or gift cards as additional revenue streams. In this category, tipping often works best for immediate service or hospitality-style interactions, while gift cards are useful for bringing in cash ahead of future orders, catering, or in-store visits. Merchants can also widen how customers participate in giving by making gifting easier to complete: Soup Stock Tokyo launched social gifting through a Shopify app so shoppers could send gifts by message or email, a useful model for food brands that want support to spread through personal networks as well as direct purchases (source).

Apparel

In the U.S., apparel sales fell sharply in March 2020 during early lockdowns. For example, during March 2020, clothing and clothing accessories store sales were down 50.7% from March 2019.

With fewer social events and office commutes during early pandemic lockdowns, apparel demand fell. Some analysts warned that the pandemic could accelerate long-term pressure on malls.

Still, customers supported their favorite clothing and shoe brands through gift cards. Tipping has historically been less common in apparel than in food service, though some brands experimented with it during the pandemic.

Clothing brand Everlane introduced the choose what you pay sale, which allowed customers to select one of three percentages for the sale price, and how much they want to spend overall. In apparel, gift cards usually make more sense than tips because they preserve future purchasing power for the customer while helping the brand with short-term cash flow. Tipping may work only in limited cases, such as highly service-led styling businesses or appointment-based retail.

Beauty

Beauty businesses can use gift cards and prepaid service bundles to bring in cash before appointments are redeemed, as shown by Toronto-based nail salon Naked Beauty Bar offering manicure or pedicure packs for later in-store use.

In the beauty realm, tipping is often common practice because it goes toward aestheticians, nail artists, and stylists. Nail artists, hairstylists, and other beauty professionals often rely on tips as part of their income in the same way servers or baristas do in restaurants or coffee shops.

That makes beauty one of the clearest non-food categories for both tools: tips align with existing customer expectations, while gift cards and prepaid bundles can help smooth demand and improve cash flow between appointments.

Charity

For brands outside of the food and beverage market, some brands route tip proceeds to a charitable cause, turning checkout tips into donations. On Shopify, brands can customize the text that appears in the tipping box so customers know which organization they're supporting.

In charity-linked campaigns, clear messaging matters. If the tip is being donated rather than retained by the business or staff, say so directly at checkout and in post-purchase communication so customers understand where the money is going.

Across these categories, the giving economy works best when the support option matches what customers already expect from the buying experience.

What can brands do?

Shopify gives retailers a way for customers to support the brand. For businesses that moved online during and after the COVID-19 period, tipping can give customers another way to express appreciation if they have the means to do so.

The tipping option is available during checkout on Shopify. Buyers can choose to tip a percentage of their order total or enter a custom amount on the payment page of checkout. It is not available after a purchase has been completed.

This capability is designed to be simple and efficient. Merchants can set up to three suggested tip percentages for customers to choose from.

There is a remarkable sense of resilience and responsibility from both brand operators and their buyers when a business is at risk. In this context, the giving economy can be understood as a way customers support brands and local businesses they value.

If you're deciding which option to use, start with customer expectations. Use tipping when your business already has a service component and customers are likely to understand the ask. Use gift cards when customers are prepaying for future products, appointments, or experiences. In some cases, using both can create immediate cash flow while preserving future customer relationships.

Lower-friction participation can also make support more accessible. In a different community-driven retail model, comic shop Revenge Of built engagement by keeping 95% of its events free, giving customers a way to show up, connect, and make smaller purchases rather than requiring a big spend up front.

"95% of our events are free for anyone to come to. We've been able to provide an outlet for them to come to an event, get a free item, hang out with a creator that they maybe enjoy or at least is writing on something that they are passionate about, and maybe pick up like a $5 comic."

— Jeff Eiser and Joe Myers, Co-founders of Revenge Of (Source)

Put the giving economy into action

The giving economy gives you more than a short-term revenue boost: it can strengthen customer relationships, improve cash flow, and create support options that feel meaningful to your community. Gift cards help preserve future demand, while tipping can unlock extra income when your business has a clear service component.

Your next step is to choose the support model that matches your category, set clear customer messaging, and activate the right tools in your store. If you're ready to turn customer goodwill into practical retail support, explore Shopify's gift card and checkout tipping features and start building your giving economy strategy today.