You cannot go wrong with Starbucks gift cards as special occasion gifts for family, friends and colleagues. The Starbucks phenomenon is quite a lesson in marketing genius, and is one of the fastest growing franchises in the past ten years. People have become addicted to their daily latte or low-fat decaf cappucino.

Despite a struggling economy, a daily gourmet coffee is something that many people will not give up. They will scrimp elsewhere in order to afford their daily ‘Tall’ or ‘Venti’ double-shot.

If you need a simple but well-appreciated gift for an office colleague, try a Starbucks gift card. The executive assistant in our office picks up a latte every morning on her way to work, and then buys an espresso on her way back from lunch. So for “secretary’s day” (which they now call something else to encompass all administrative assistants since the title ’secretary’ has become old-fashioned), we all got together and purchased a $250 Starbucks gift card for her. She was ecstatic.

I don’t think she even realized how much she was spending a month at Starbucks until she got that gift certificate and exhausted it in less than a month!

It used to be that giving a gift certificate as a gift was a bit of a cop out. It implied that you had no idea what to get a person, that you had no creativity, and that you couldn’t be bothered spending time to shop for that perfect item that matched the personality of the recipient.

This really isn’t the case any more, as gift cards have grown in popularity among gift givers and recipients alike. For one thing, gift cards are available for almost every type of item and every type of specialty store. So gone is the day that a gift card was so generic that it didn’t fit the person you were giving it to.

Today you can get the coffee lover a gift card from Starbucks, if you know them to be addicted to a daily latte. You can give an iTunes gift card to the music lover with the Macbook Pro. Choose a gift certificate from the favorite restaurant of your mom or dad.

As you will find by browsing our listings, gift certificates are available from almost every type of store, restaurant or travel venue and you can select in any denomination that fits your budget.

I think the recipients of your gifts are going to be very happy!