The perfect gift card: An exploration of teenagers' gift card associations

This study provides new insights into the meaning and value of gift cards in gift exchange among teenagers who gave and/or received gift cards during the Christmas/Hanukkah season. From their reflections of the reasons for giving gift cards and their feelings about receiving gift cards from others, the social roles played out in buying gift cards as a gift selection strategy are assessed and the values associated with gift cards explored. The results suggest that givers playing the roles of acknowledger and pleaser are heavy gift card givers when buying gifts for difficult recipients. Acknowledgers incorporate gift cards into existing strategies for gift selection (especially “settle,” “pawn off,” and “buy relationship affirming gifts”), but for pleasers, buying gift cards may be part of a new gift selection strategy—“play it safe.” Importantly, although gift cards can reflect economic, social, and functional value, the giving of gift cards seems to result in a new form of value for the recipients—the value of choice, which occurs when the control over gift selection is transferred from giver to receiver. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Is a gift on sale “heart-discounted”? Givers’ misprediction on the value of discounted gifts and the influence of service robots

The main purpose of this research is to investigate whether, why, and when givers and recipients perceive the value of a discounted gift differently. The studies provide convergent evidence that givers perceive discounted gifts as less valuable than regular-priced gifts whereas recipients do not perceive them as different. Givers' devaluation of the discounted gift is driven by their concern about the thoughtfulness of a gift. Moreover, the giver-recipient asymmetry is mitigated when the in-store interaction with a salesperson is substituted by technology via a service robot. This research contributes to the gift-giving literature and the growing literature on service robots by revealing how promotional offers influence consumers’ evaluation of gifts and how technological advance in retail may affect the proposed effect. Managerial implications for planning and executing price promotions for gifts are also discussed.     

What Does this Gift Say about Me,You, and Us? The Role of Adolescents’ Gift Giving in Managing their Impressions among their Peers

This study examines adolescents’ gift giving using a qualitative methodology, based on impression management theory. Gift‐giving motives and the characteristics of the chosen gifts indicated that adolescents use gift giving instrumentally to manage and protect their impressions among their peers. The study extends the literature on adolescents’ gift giving, and provides evidence regarding different types of gifts such as joint, neutral, and twofold gifts. Additionally, some gifts are aimed at strengthening similarity and bind the extended selves of givers and receivers.     

The Need to Give Gratuitously: A Relevant Concept Anchored in Catholic Social Teaching to Envision the Consumer Behavior

The “gift exchange theory” articulated by Marcel Mauss, along with his core concept of a threefold obligation (giving/receiving/returning), is the dominant theoretical framework used to explain the majority of gift issues in marketing. This perspective assumes that some interest always lies behind gifts, such that a gift always implies a counterpart of receiving something in return. Despite the relevance of this approach in understanding the day-to-day consumer behavior, this paper presents empirical cases where the consumer is also able to give freely, that is to say without implying a counterpart or even expecting it. To explain those empirical cases, we mobilize a key teaching of the Catholic Church: the “gratuitous gift” and then introduce the concept of the “need to give.” We show that gratuitousness is a relevant concept to understand most of gifts made by consumers, and we develop the normative aspect of gratuitous gift for ethical marketers (i.e., what ethical marketers should consider to understand consumers properly and in a more humanistic way). We also show that Catholic Social Teaching offers an appropriate anthropology to understand consumer behaviors motivated by this need for gratuitousness. To conclude, we propose further avenues of research.     

Is a $200 Nordstrom Gift Card Worth More or Less Than a $200 Gap Gift Card? The Asymmetric Valuations of Luxury Gift Cards

Gift cards account for a $200 billion market in the US, yet little is known about consumers’ preferences and valuations of different gift cards. We examine how average US consumers feel about exchanging luxury brand gift cards (LGCs) versus non-luxury brand gift cards (NLGCs). Using secondary data analyses, surveys, and experiments, we demonstrate two asymmetries: between valuations of LGCs versus NLGCs and between valuations of gift cards by givers versus recipients. We show that LGCs are valued less than NLGCs with identical price tags. LGCs are more likely to be swapped or sold. Resellers demand and buyers pay lower prices for LGCs. These effects are mediated by the perceived utility of the gift cards as gifts and moderated by a person’s role in the gifting process. Gift givers value and prefer to give LGCs more, whereas recipients prefer and value NLGCs more.     

The influence of sharing versus self-use on the preference for different types of promotional offers

Sharing, which refers to giving something you have to someone else, is one of the most ubiquitous forms of human behavior in the world. Everyone experiences it in various situations, including buying food. Nonetheless, although buying something to share with others is quite common in our daily lives, most consumer research on buying focuses on the condition of “self-use” rather than “sharing.” The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of promotional offers on consumers' purchase decisions when buying food for self-use/sharing with others. The authors conducted four experiments to answer the main research questions. The results indicated that consumers prefer “price discounts” over “bonus packs” when the shopping task relates to self-use due to their concern about “loss reduction.” In contrast, they prefer bonus packs over price discounts when the shopping task relates to sharing with others because of their focus on “extra gains.” In addition, consumers’ perceived responsibility is a moderator. When perceived responsibility is low and the purchase is for self-use (sharing with others), price discounts (bonus pack) are favored over bonus packs (price discounts). However, when perceived responsibility is high, consumer preference to promotional offers are not significant different either in self-use or sharing with others condition. It seems that role of responsibility is influential when the shopping task relates to self-use. This study not only contributes to a deeper understanding of consumer psychology but will also be beneficial to practitioners in designing effective promotional strategies that consider motives for food shopping.     

Gift cards: a review and research agenda

Gift cards have received limited study despite being a key element of many retailers’ strategies. One reason may be that approaching the study of gift cards from a traditional economic perspective, i.e. ignoring social relationships, leaves little justification for the rapid increase in gift card sales. Failing to see the value of gift cards, many commentators go so far as to argue against the purchase of gift cards, suggesting that consumers would better off using other gift types. This misses the important point that givers voluntarily buy cards and receivers enjoy gaining them. Consumers undoubtedly perceive the value in gift cards. We suggest that taking a broader perspective on consumer behavior and considering consumers involved in social systems that encourage gift giving, allows us to see the value gift cards create while allowing us to address the concerns gift cards raise more effectively. In this article, we detail the benefits created for givers, receivers, and merchants by the use of gift cards. We highlight areas with significant public policy implications. We outline an agenda for some promising areas of research, including seeking to gain a better understanding of the psychology of giving gift cards and the economics of retail strategies dependent upon gift card usage.     

Financial Disclosure and Customer Satisfaction: Do Companies Talking the Talk Actually Walk the Walk?

Previous research demonstrates that consumers support firms’ CSR activities, and increasingly demand socially responsible products and services. However, an implicit assumption in the extant literature is that the purchaser and the consumer of the product are the same person. The current research focuses on a unique form of socially responsible consumption behavior: gift-giving. Through 30 depth consumer interviews, we develop a typology of consumers based on whether consumers integrate CSR-related information into purchases, and whether the purchases are for themselves or for others (i.e., gifts). We find that in some instances, consumers actively avoid purchasing products from socially responsible organizations and do so with the intention of managing their impressions with the gift recipient. This is counter to previous research that suggests consumers often choose to make socially responsible consumption decisions in efforts to satisfy self-presentation concerns. In addition, the decision to engage in socially responsible consumption for oneself but not for others was motivated by a variety of factors including the role of the recipient and a concern over the credibility of socially responsible gifts. Finally, some participants who do not incorporate CSR into their own personal consumption chose gifts based on a variety of CSR activities in an effort to build awareness for socially responsible organizations.     

Leveraging Intercollegiate Athletics to Support Academic Giving at NCAA Division I Institutions

On average, National Collegiate Athletic Association Football Bowl Division (top-level of U.S. Intercollegiate athletics) schools raise 15% of their athletic budget from private fundraising. Key questions remain as to how increased emphasis on athletic fundraising influences academic giving. Some authors claim symbiotic effects while others assert that athletic gifts “crowd out” academic giving. The current study analyzes the largest single-institution set of individual donor data available to date. First time donors were more than twice as likely to give to athletics as academics. Fifty-one percent of donors making gifts to both athletics and academics (SPLIT donors) made their initial gift to athletics. Problematically, the conversion rate of athletic-only to split donors has fallen to less than 1%. On three different retention measures split donors have higher retention rates than athletic-only donors, who have higher retention rates than academic-only donors. Among split donors, 41.67% give their largest gift to support an academic program. Rather than competing, development officers would be better advised to systematically cultivating donors to support both athletics and academics.     

Mobile shopping intensity: Consumer demographics and motivations

PurposeTo investigate how consumer demographics and motivations may influence their mobile shopping intensity.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was developed to collect data using SurveyMonkey's online shopper panel. The final sample consisted of 937 mobile shoppers. Linear regression analysis was performed to test the hypotheses.FindingsConsumers' education and income levels significantly increase their number of mobile purchases, their frequency of purchases, and the amount of money spent on mobile purchases. Males have been found to spend more on mobile shopping than females, while younger people made more mobile purchases than older people. This study also identifies six types of motivations that drive consumers’ mobile shopping intensity, including convenience seeking, bargain hunting, enjoyment seeking, perceived usefulness, ease of use, and innovativeness.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research may examine additional motivational measures and situational factors and conduct cross-cultural studies.Practical implicationsFindings from this study can help businesses develop their mobile shopping strategies.Originality/valueThis is the first study to investigate how consumer demographics and motivations may influence their mobile shopping intensity.     

Gift Cards: Disclosure One Step Removed

Gift card purchases have grown significantly in recent years. The growth has been attributed to recipients being able to make personal selections that best meet their needs while reducing the giver’s risk of improper selection and wasted time. However, while gift cards have positive benefits for both giver and recipient, certain fees, and terms and conditions involved with their use and nonuse ultimately may impact the level of satisfaction derived. This paper provides background into the use of gift cards and the development of “open‐loop” and “closed‐loop” cards. Further, it examines current levels of legal protection afforded to consumers. The paper discusses how disclosure and notice, concepts intended to protect consumers, are often neglected or unusable because the actual party at risk is not the party with whom the purchase transaction was consummated. Implications are drawn for those who are charged with creating effective public policy and consumer affairs professionals who wish to provide assistance to both consumers and regulators.     

Studying patterns of consumer's grocery shopping trip

Previous research on (grocery) shopping trips has focused on studying the relationship between shopping frequency and shopper's demographic characteristics. Recognizing that shoppers are heterogeneous in terms of their shopping trip regularity as well as shopping frequency, we propose a mixture model of the exponential and the Erlang-2 distribution with heterogeneous frequency for shopping trip intervals. Applied to IRI (Information Resources, inc.) shopping trip data, we found that 70 percent of shoppers visit grocery stores with random intervals and 30 percent with relatively fixed intervals. We also found clear differences between these “random” and “routine” shoppers in terms of several demographic and purchase behavioral characteristics. The “routine” shoppers are identified to have higher opportunity costs which make it difficult for them to visit grocery stores more often and/ or to switch stores. However, they spend more dollars for a given shopping trip. Finally, we discuss managerial iniplications of segmenting shoppers by their shopping trip regularity.     

How income shapes moral judgments of prosocial behavior

The current research extends past work on how consumers (as “observers”) view ethical choices made by others (“actors”). Using a person-centered approach to moral judgments, we show that consumers are judged differentially, based on their income, for engaging in certain prosocial behaviors. Nine studies demonstrate that engaging in the same prosocial behavior, such as volunteering, leads to different responses depending on whether the actor earns income versus receives government assistance. Consistent with our theorizing, we find that aid recipients are given less latitude in how they spend their time than those earning an income and are scrutinized to a greater degree for their choices because people believe their time would be better spent seeking employment. Consequently, the lower moral judgments of aid recipients who choose to volunteer (vs. income earners) are driven, at least in part, by the anger observers feel about the perceived misuse of time. Additional information or cues about employment efforts or work inability attenuate these judgments. Importantly, we document implications for support for federal spending on welfare programs.     

Moments of truth in gift exchanges: A critical incident analysis of communication indicators used to detect gift failure

This research examines how gift recipients communicate gift failure to givers, whether through paralinguistic indicators, direct verbal comments, and consumption (or not) of the gift. Critical incident reports identified specific communication indicators that signaled displeasure with the gift and measured the impact of these indicators on important exchange outcomes. Overall, failed gifts have a greater impact on future exchanges than on relationship quality. However, failure to appreciate the gift can have a significant negative effect on relationships. Gift failures between friends, co‐workers, and in‐laws are more susceptible to relationship harm than those involving close kin, like parents, spouses, and children. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Premium generic brand (PGB) choice vis-à-vis generic and national brands: A scenario comparison for self-use,family consumption and gift giving in a food versus non-food and cross-cultural context

PurposeThe study models factors affecting brand category choice for generic as well as national brands, and next contrasts them to a new brand category: premium generic brands (PGB). PGB are a new occurrence in brand and product management, and consumer reactions to PGB are not yet well understood.Design/methodology/approachThree purchase motivation scenarios were presented to 553 consumers to test for their purchase intentions for self-consumption, family use or gift giving. A quasi-experiment was chosen where respondents were exposed to store-like presentations of actual real life products and asked for their likelihood to choose the national or generic brand over the new PGB. The study applied multivariate testing such as MANOVA.FindingsSeparate models were developed for food and non-food choice through backward deletion regression analyses, and the most parsimonious models revealed strong similarities for self as well as family consumption choices, but distinct drivers for gifts. Value for money, image and satisfaction are key factors in brand choice overall, but for gifts, ‘image’ overpowers all other predictors.Originality/valueThe study identified the Chinese as a distinct consumer segment for brand choice since they are more open to potentially consider PGB as gifts, whereas Caucasians only buy national brands for gift giving.     

“Seize the Deal,or Return It Losing Your Free Gift”: The Effect of a Gift‐With‐Purchase Promotion on Product Return Intention

The current article sheds light on an important issue in marketing: how marketers can prevent consumers from returning previously purchased goods. This research examines the relationship between a gift‐with‐purchase promotion and consumer product returns, hypothesizing that consumers who purchase products that come with a free gift will be less likely to return the products. Evidence shows that a gift‐with‐purchase promotion reduces consumer product returns and that this relationship is mediated by perceived loss in returning a product. Then, the results indicate that the choice of free gifts reduces product return intention and that this relationship is serially mediated by perceived ownership and perceived loss. The findings further suggest that when consumers with high product involvement can select free gifts among alternatives, they tend to perceive more ownership and loss and thereby are less likely to return the promoted product. Overall, the current research proposes that consumers prefer to seize the deal rather than to return it when they get a gift‐with‐purchase, have a chance to select a free gift, and are highly involved with the product.     

Analysis of free gift card program effectiveness

Retailers use various promotions, such as gift cards, to increase profits. When retailers give gift cards “free” to consumers who spend above specified thresholds in a single purchase, some consumers may buy more goods. We develop a model to derive the optimal purchase amount thresholds and gift card values. The model is developed for consumers without and then with a spending constraint. We find that the retailer's profit margin, the degree of forward buying and stockpiling, and use of gift cards in future purchases that would have been made with cash, are the most important factors in determining the profitability of gift cards. Gift cards may be very profitable for high-margin retailers who can limit the degree of forward buying and stockpiling, particularly when consumers use gift cards to buy goods they would not have bought from the retailer without gift cards. If this is how consumers use the gift cards, then consumers spending above the cards’ value at redemption can significantly increase their profitability. Without a consumer spending constraint, it is best for the retailer to offer at most one gift card at a large purchase amount. With a consumer spending constraint, it may be profitable to give gift cards at multiple purchase amount thresholds. We also show that the commonly observed policy of giving gift cards at equally spaced purchase amounts may be profitable when forward buying and stockpiling can be controlled. Moreover, we show that gift cards become more profitable when consumers are inconsistent, that is, they overestimate their probability of redeeming the gift card at purchase time. Finally, gift cards may have only a slight profit advantage over discounts if consumers are consistent. Consumer inconsistency and spending above the cards’ value increase this advantage.     

Consumer responses to gift receipt in business‐to‐consumer contexts

This article delineates business‐to‐consumer from consumer‐toconsumer and business‐to‐business gift giving, and discusses the influence of gift, recipient, and giver characteristics on gift evaluation and reciprocation likelihood in business‐to‐consumer contexts. A study examines the impact of relationship strength, gift value, nature of request, and recipient gender on gift evaluation, reciprocation likelihood, and future store choice. A stronger relationship with the business and an implicit request for reciprocation affect consumer responses to business‐to‐consumer gifts positively. Gift value and recipient gender did not have a significant effect on outcome variables. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Does santa have a great job? Gift shopping value and satisfaction

For good or bad, shopping and gifting are intertwined. This research looks at sources of gratification associated with shopping for gifts. More particularly, the roles played by general and specific shopping orientations in shaping gift shopping value and satisfaction are examined. Results from testing a theoretical model suggest that gift shopping orientations, such as agape, may dominate general shopping orientations, such as price consciousness. Also, the important role played by utilitarian shopping value is consistent with gift shopping more as a job than as a source of leisure. However, the results fall short of suggesting a negative relationship between gift shopping and hedonic shopping value. So gift shopping may be a job, but a job that is not so horrible after all. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Chewing increases consumers' thought-engagement during retail shopping

In five studies, we conclude that chewing gum may be an effective way to increase consumers’ thought-engagement while shopping. First, consumers chewing gum spend more time and report more thoughts than those who were not chewing gum, demonstrating the “chewing effect”. We also find that chewable candies have similar effects as chewing gum. Second, chewing more increases the viewing time and variety-seeking behavior among consumers. However, chewing too much gum decreases individuals’ focus, eliminating the “chewing effect”. Finally, the chewing effect is mitigated when consumers are under high cognitive load. These results are tested in laboratory settings and in a field setting (grocery store). Overall, this exploratory research demonstrates the applicability of using chewing gum (or chewable candies) as an effective way to enhance consumers’ thought-engagement in a retail context.