Introduction
The article ‘Consumer Gifting Behaviors: One for Me, One for you?’ explores the relationship between self-gifting and gift-giving. It identifies the consumer behavior while purchasing gifts both for themselves and for other people. The following is an analytical summary of the article body.
Main points
People usually buy gifts to celebrate special events like graduations, birthdays, and weddings; for consolation purposes in case of disappointment, and personal rewards. There are two types of gifts: Interpersonal gifts and self-gifts. The former involves those presents received from other people, the latter involves those gifts one buys for own self perhaps as an expression of personal treat. Self-gifts represent Behaviors controlled by the person and this is dependent on the situation that a person is in. For instance, a person with more money to spend may buy something to reward himself or when a person is feeling victorious, one may buy a gift to appreciate his achievement. However, this depends on a person’s life happenings but not special occasions. Rare victories are more influential when purchasing a self-gift than when celebrating a birthday. The authors assume that self-gifts are meant to respond to one’s feelings. On the contrary, a person may also buy himself a gift during his wedding day, graduation, or even anniversary.
There are 3 parallel dimensions that relate self gifts with interpersonal gifts. The communication dimension asserts that people give gifts to convey messages such as love and gratitude to others. A person may also purchase a self-gift to convey his self-worth. The exchange dimension involves the establishment of barter of gifts between the giver and the recipient. The giver presents the gift perhaps as a response to a gift received from the person he gives it to. For self-gifts, a person may buy herself a gift as a motivation to achieve a certain goal. ‘Specialness’ is a dimension that shows gifts as a bonding agent between two people. When one gives out a gift, it shows a special feeling of emotion with the recipient. Equally, one may buy herself a gift because she has a love for oneself. These authors say a ‘free dinner ‘after a time-share presentation could be a false gift because it doesn’t show a cultural bind between the people involved. We can argue that it shows a special treat to the recipient. Not many people access free dinner. Some people may give gifts bearing all these dimensions; a person may buy a gift for his girlfriend because he wants to convey a message of love, respond to an earlier received gift and confirm how special the girlfriend is to him.
Main Findings
Individuals buy gifts to relieve themselves of stress which may result from a person’s daily pressure from work. In this case, one utilizes any available opportunity for shopping to shop for all his needs. For instance when buying some a gift, one may also buy herself one because there may be no other time to do so. Having more money to spend can also influence the purchase of self gifts. Women are more frequent shoppers than men but they have similar expenditure on gifts per year. Women are likely to have time to combine occasions like birthdays or anniversaries and do shopping than men. This may be because of cultural responsibilities bequeathed to women as caregivers in most societies. Single people are likely to buy more self-gifts because they may not have immediate family members to receive gifts from or send gifts to. They do this to fulfill their own desire for gifts. Most shoppers do not plan their gift purchase: They decide while already shopping for other things. However, the authors do not show if one can decide not to buy a gift already intended.
Validity of the article
This article shows the factors to be considered while marketing gifts to consumers. It shows that consumers usually combine shopping for others with their own purchases. The motivation one usually has and the financial ability. Marketers can learn how to display prices that show discounts to those who buy more than one item. Salespeople can also suggest to buyers to buy for themselves while shopping for gifts for others. Though men are rare shoppers, marketers must understand that continued promotions of men’s goods may attract them to keep spending on gifts.
While it may help marketers improve sales, this article may influence consumers to identify the value of planning before shopping. The frequency of women in shopping could be an exposition of cultural roles given to them thus it may not be conclusive to say women are more frequent shoppers. Besides, the research was conducted in Tennessee whose findings may vary with other places.