Accomplishments
The Incentive Federation has chalked up an impressive record related to its primary goals:
Background
The Incentive Federation Inc. was founded in 1984 as an umbrella organization for the incentive field representing national trade associations, trade publications, and the national trade shows. In this role, it is responsible for all aspects of incentive marketing, including merchandise, travel, and services, encompassing incentives, rewards, recognition, promotional products, and other related promotional tools. Originally founded as the government affairs voice of the incentive field, the Federation continues to lobby state and federal government to protect the field. In this function, it has been successful at:
- providing constructive input into tax laws related to the treatment of qualified non-cash rewards;
- helping federal and state agencies see the benefits of safety incentive programs in reducing workplace injuries;
- helping federal regulators understand that incentives and premiums have a variety of important, legitimate uses for business; and
- providing input when states draft statutes or regulations regulating promotion marketing.
Building on its success, the Federation has expanded its mission into three related areas: (a) corporate outreach, as a co-founder of the Incentive Performance Center (IPC), the incentive field’s major outreach group, (b) research, and (c) education, through its administration of bi-annual studies of the incentive field and through its support of the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement which is affiliated with the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. The Incentive Federation Update newsletter keeps members informed about its work in these three areas and on the latest laws and regulations affecting the field.
The goal of the IPC is to bring the successful story of incentive marketing to American business to reinforce the message that merchandise, travel, and service incentives can motivate a sales force, employees, retailers and consumers. The IPC has developed a Web site, http://www.incentivecentral.org to disseminate the Federation’s key messages. The Federation is also responsible for major biannual surveys of corporate end-users and incentive field practitioners to identify trends and prevalent practices.
Federation's Industry Studies
The Incentive Federation’s most recent survey is titled United States Incentive Merchandise and Travel Marketplace Study. The study’s objective is to provide insight on the total market size of the incentive travel and merchandise field and the uses of merchandise and travel as incentive and motivational tools. In addition to assessing the total size of the incentive merchandise and travel field, the study sheds light on the types of companies that use merchandise and travel as incentives, on the benefits of merchandise and travel as incentives, and on the views of end-users regarding the usefulness of merchandise and travel incentives. The study also provides an insight on the anticipated future usage of merchandise and travel as incentive and motivational tools.
The Federation’s previously-released study was titled A Study Conducted Among Current Users of Merchandise Items for Motivation/Incentive Applications. That study’s objective was to provide insight into the practices and attitudes among customers of incentives. It gathered information from participants in the specific areas of consumer/user promotions, sales and dealer incentives, and non-sales employee programs. It included valuable data about the sources of merchandise and travel items used in incentive programs and specific merchandise and travel items anticipated for use in future programs. All of The Incentive Federation’s studies receive wide publicity and are available at http://www.incentivefederation.org and http://www.incentivecentral.org.
Promoting
- Development of a message that is resonating with corporate America;
- Creation of the Incentive Performance Center (IPC) to promote the industry;
- Development of the Incentivecentral.org portal to help businesses interested in learning more;
- Contribution to the expanded use of rewards and recognition in the non-sales arena.
Protecting
- Recognition and safety programs— The Federation was instrumental in the development of key provisions in the 1996 Tax Reform Act that provided a significant incentive for the use of merchandise rewards in safety and length-of-service programs.
- OSHA regulations— The Federation helped make sure that OSHA regulations related to incentive programs took into account the vital role they can play in improving safety.
- Protection of bank incentives and premiums— The Federation helped federal regulators understand that premiums and incentives had legitimate uses on the part of financial institutions.
- Protection of sweepstakes and contests— The Federation helped state and federal regulators understand that sweepstakes and contests should not be saddled with onerous and unfair requirements.
- Keeping members informed—the Federation's legislative monitoring service has helped promotion and gift card suppliers keep abreast of any key state and federal regulations which are under discussion, and that could affect their businesses.
Researching
- Founding support for the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, the pre-eminent research organization in our field;
- Support for nearly one dozen research projects created through the Forum and association partners;
- Support for White Papers created by industry associations and partners.