Gift Giving...

When giving a gift, is it always an involved decision? Do we put complete thought into our gifts or just buy for necessity and an easy purchase? In order to measure consumer involvement Laurent & Kapferer (1985) propose that it will be affected by four components:

1. Importance and risk. (FTPEPS: Finance, time, performance, ego, physical and social)

2. Probability of making a bad purchase.

3. Pleasure value of product category.

4. Sign value of product category (what do other people think of it and what it stands for; i.e. brand recognition).

According to Laurent and Kapferer's average involvement scores for various products a gift often given (champagne) has a high importance of perceived risk and a high probability of making an erroneous choice. Therefore, if buying champagne as a gift it would be a highly involved product as it entails many considerations. This is similar to products such as clothes and perfume (often given as gifts), suggesting that products often chosen as gifts have a high purchase involvement from the gift-giver.

In the current financial climate when giving gifts it is often value that will dominate purchase decision. There are many factors that can drive the value of the product; it's functionality, what is symbolises (often through branding and labels that are shown to be reputable) and their fun factor. For example, for Christmas 2008 I asked for a crumb-pet (a small novelty hoover)- this product was both functional (for desk use) and had a fun factor as it was in the shape of a pig which sucked crumbs through its nose.

Danzinger (2004) takes a different approach to gift- giving and suggests that gift-giving emotionally connects the giver and the receiver, therefore creating emotional shopping where the goal is to achieve a special feeling by giving a gift that communicates a message. This addresses that gift selection is from the right side of the brain (emotional), however, where we purchase from (store-selection) is left dominated (rational). This impacts upon marketing as it will be the experience that we have in the store that counts whilst making our purchase. For example, Ho-Ho Silver in Taunton, Somerset puts all jewelery in expensive looking gift boxes which are then gift-wrapped and put in an expensive-looking carrier bag; this saves personal time as the present is wrapped and the expensive looking box and bag allude to an expensive and worthwhile product. If marketers could concentrate on the extras offered by a store and markert the product along with these then many more consumers could be attracted.

The effect of good and bad gift giving: