A person I knew recently had to go to exchange a gift that they received as the item was something that she had already. So, she decided to exchange it for something else by first getting store credit. Then the tricky part came as always with store credit as rarely can you ever simply spend the exact amount of credit that you have. You usually end up having to spend more.
This particular scenario was a little more excessive than normal as the person ended up using the credit to buy another item that was two times the value of the original item. I guess the mentality was that the credit made it feel like you are getting the item at a half price sale and so it seems like a great deal.
I know this is usually why companies love to have things such as gift cards as it does usually translate to people spending more than the value of it. I once heard of one person who always tried to simply sell his gift cards as this way he doesn’t end up having to spend more and can actually gain some interest out of it as oppose to leaving the card idle. I guess even using store credit requires some discipline as well.