Stores need to provide incentives for us to use, to drive demand.  As we know, they can save on credit card fees, so give us a little discount and then we'll have a good reason to spend our bits.  Gyft does 3% back, so I use that more than not.  If they had a Vermont Flannel gift card, while VF directly accepted btc with no discount or cash back, I'd have no incentive to use btc direct.

New Egg nailed this by offering that heavy discount when they first started accepting bitcoin.  It was $150 off $500 or more anywhere in the store for the first weekend.  This got people to at least start using it.

I do think that SteemDollars will be different, however, as sbd is more spendable, given its lack of speculative upside that btc presents, while still providing all of the friction-less advantages.  Love that FoxyCart could be leading the way! :)