[Reprinted from Perspectives Fall 2011]
It may not yet be Thanksgiving, but
holiday shopping is well underway.
Some view the search for the perfect
gift to be a big challenge; others see it as a
big headache. But no matter how you look
at it, one thing's for sure. It's big business.
Understanding what motivates gift givers is
important for retailers, manufacturers, and
marketers who are looking to capture their
attention—and their dollars.
What Kind of Gift Giver Are You?
The perfect gift, says Cele Otnes, is
not necessarily the most expensive or the
most popular. According to Otnes, a
professor of marketing and advertising
whose research focuses on ritual-based
consumer behavior, it's much more personal.
"If you found a soda can that was run
over in the road and you and your best
friend had a private joke about soda cans
run over in the road, that might be the
greatest gift you ever give that person," Otnes says. "On the other hand, if you are
in a hellacious relationship with someone and you give them a diamond ring, that
might be the worst gift you could give. So
it's not about the gift."
Instead, Otnes says, it's about the
relationship. And she should know. Along
with two other researchers, Otnes
conducted a 12-year study in which they
monitored the buying patterns of the same
five people as they did their holiday
shopping for an extensive number of
family and friends. What Otnes found is
that our gift purchases are driven by how
much—or how little—we care about the
relationship.
Otnes and her colleagues discovered
six roles that people fill when buying gifts:
• The Pleaser, who tries to please the
recipient;
• The Provider, who purchases needed
items as gifts;
• The Compensator, who makes
reparations for a loss the recipient
suffered;
• The Socializer, who wants to pass on
values or knowledge;
• The Acknowledger, who buys
obligatory gifts; and
• The Avoider, who, through a lack of
gift-giving, sends a deliberate message.
While you might not be cognizant of
what role you are filling when you give
someone a gift, you should be, Otnes
says. "Think about what the gift says
about the relationship. And what you
want it to say about the relationship. Do I
want it to keep saying what it's always
been saying or do I want to take it to a
different level?"
Gifts not only say something about
the relationship; they say something
about you, says Brittany Duff, assistant
professor of advertising. Duff notes that
she might not care what the tag inside a
sweater says if she buys it for herself, "But if I give it to somebody else, I'm
going to care a lot more about what that
label says. Because when I give them a
gift, it says something about me. So the
brand becomes increasingly important
there, as do little things like perception of
price or time spent."
More Than Ribbons and Bows
With holiday gift-giving alone
estimated to be more than a $65-billionper-year business, and weddings,
birthdays, Valentine's Day, and other
special occasions adding to the coffers,how can retailers and marketers increase
their chances of capturing a share of the
lucrative gift-giving market? It's important
for business to understand the roles
that gift givers fill, to assess how their
products can fill those roles, to build
connections with customers around this
understanding, and to target advertising
to capitalize on the roles and connections.
Otnes, Duff, and Tina Lowrey, a
professor of marketing at the University
of Texas at San Antonio who earned her
Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, offer
some practical suggestions for businesses
to follow as they position themselves in
the gift-giving market or fine-tune their
relationship with consumers in order to
improve their position—and their sales.
• Anticipate recipient reaction. Many
advertisers—such as jewelers—focus
on the response of the recipient to the
gift. The consumer thinks, "Oh, she's going to love this!" Or they envision
the joy on their children's faces as
they rip open their packages. "This is
wise," Duff says, "because gift-giving
is, among other things, a bonding
experience."
• Consider the role of the consumer. "It's important that marketers realize
that gift selection is almost as much
about the self-identity of the giver as it
is about the recipient," says Lowrey,
who conducted multiple research
studies on gift-giving with Otnes for
over a decade, first as a doctoral
student and later as a professor. "Only
'The Pleaser' sincerely wants to select
gifts that the recipient will like. All
other identities are more about the
giver."
• Identify products as gifts during the
holiday season. "At holiday time, people have gift-giving in mind, so it's
a smart move to highlight products as
gifts, not just as general sales," Duff
says. "People are more likely to attend
to it if it's matching something they
would like to accomplish."
• Customize products. "Customers are
really concerned with customization
these days," Otnes notes. "For
example, good old M&Ms, this plain
chocolate product that's been around
forever, has repositioned itself into this
wonderful, almost luxury brand
because you can customize it with
pictures, with colors, with words.
Right off the Internet you can order
these things—and the prices are
ridiculously high!" But people are
buying, because they love the
customization. Businesses that find
original ways to offer customization
find more customers interested in
their product.
• Accommodate customers. "The
number one thing businesses should
do to attract gift-buyers is to offer
better service from start to finish," Lowrey says. "For online purchasing,
this includes easier navigation, more
timely and less costly shipping, more
lenient return policies, etc. For brick
and mortar purchasing, it means
more salesclerks to help customers with their gift selections, free wrapping,
and, again, more lenient return
policies."
• Consider how rational arguments
play out in emotional ads. "When you
start bringing rational arguments into
more emotional ads, you aren't making
a singular connection," Duff says. "I
don't care about your message for the
most part, but if I am giving it a little
bit of attention, I want something in
return. I either want to feel good, be
happy, or learn something or find a
solution to a problem. I need to get
something back. If you're giving me a
jumble of things, that doesn't help.
Having one main thing for consumers
to grasp is probably best.
• Grasp consumer psychology. "Just
increasingly understanding consumer
psychology is incredibly important," Duff says. "Understanding the context
in which your product or brand is used
becomes very important also, because
there's an increased understanding that
people don't necessarily always use a
product or do things the way you tell
them to."
Less to Spend
The strategies these experts suggest
are even more important as retailers
continue to face the prospect of lower
consumer spending in the current
economic conditions. A 2009 study
conducted by the International Council
of Shopping Centers, reported that over
three-fourths of more than 2,500
consumers said they had cut back their
shopping in the past year (and women
were much more likely to cut back than men). Most kept a tighter fist on their
dollars as either a "precautionary
measure" or because it "seemed like the
right thing to do." While this study looked
at all spending—not just on gifts—it's
apparent that gift purchases have taken a
hit during the recession. People are
cutting back on how much they spend,
how many people they buy for, and when
they begin shopping (many start earlier, to
spread the costs out). In addition, more
shoppers are frequenting discount or
outlet stores and finding other ways to
save money on gifts.
"The recession has likely led to
selecting less expensive gifts," says
Lowrey. "Many people are also foregoing
tangible gifts altogether—for example,
going out to eat to celebrate an
anniversary, rather than exchanging gifts."
"You might make group family
decisions like, this year we'll do 'X'
instead of giving Christmas presents—
we'll take our trip and that will count," adds Otnes. Likewise, she says, the
recipient of a Wal-Mart gift card might decide to spend it on needed groceries or
other practical items instead of what we
would traditionally consider a "gift." On
the other hand, it's ironic that a recession
can also do just the opposite—that is, it
can prompt people to buy items that they
might not normally buy. "You might not
want to spend money, but maybe a $10
bar of soap will get you out of your funk—
for example, if you didn't get a raise," Otnes says.
Pricing and bargains have become
more salient during the recession. "People have gotten much more bargainconscious,
and it's really shifted the way
we shop for gifts," Otnes says. "In the
good old days, the Christmas shopping
season started the day after Thanksgiving.
Then retailers started to push the season
to start in September. Now retailers are
really worried because consumers are
waiting as long as they can, gambling that
prices are going to go down as Christmas
gets closer."
Gifts at Your Fingertips
If fallout from the recession doesn't
complicate matters enough, e-commerce
has created additional challenges, and
opportunities, for retailers. Internet Retailer
magazine estimates that more than 70
percent of consumers shop online during
the holiday season.
"The Internet has changed gift
shopping forever," Otnes declares. "Some
folks resist it, because it doesn't allow
them that ambient spirit of Christmas
shopping—it dilutes the whole running
around the night before and getting hot
chocolate at Panera. So you have to
choose as a consumer: What do you want
to do? Most people do a little bit of both."
One great advantage of the Internet,
Otnes says, is it puts stores at your
fingertips that you would otherwise never
have access to. "I would say," Lowrey
adds, "that the Internet is probably the single most important change in shopping
in general in our generation." It's not only
great for consumers, she says, but for
businesses as well. "It has given
businesses the ability to reach a much
larger group of customers in a much easier
way."
And it has spawned gift sites such as
etsy.com, which specializes in handmade
items, and redenvelope.com, through
which you can purchase gifts by various
categories. Sure, you lose out on the hustle
and bustle of holiday shopping among the
crowds, but you gain bargains, the ability
to compare products and prices, and
access to pretty much whatever you want
when you let your fingers do the shopping.
And, if you're overwhelmed by
all the choices, you can always go the
increasingly popular route of gift cards. "There was this belief that consumers
would resist this influx of gift cards
because they're not very personal," Otnes says. "But the truth is they're so
convenient and they take the risk
completely out, unless you completely
blow it and get a card from a store that
someone is boycotting."
Getting Down to Business
So, if gift-giving is big business, even
in down times, what do retailers and
marketers need to know to get their
share of the gift-giving pie?
First, their advertising must be
relevant. Keep in mind, Duff says, that the
typical person sees about 5,000 ads a day.
She recently asked her students to recall as
many ads as they possibly could from the
day before, and the most a student could
recall was eight. The other 4,992 ads are
filed under "Sensory Overload/Not Paying
Attention/Don't Care."
The only way advertisers can get
people to care is to be relevant. Duff likens
it to what is called the "cocktail party
effect," which is the general ability to filter
out important, relevant noises or those that
require a response when there are many
competing background noises. For instance,
at a party, you focus on the people you're
talking with, and try to block out all the
other noise around you. But if you happen
to hear your name spoken at a nearby
table, you pay attention. "We're bombarded
with messages as consumers, and don't
have the time to pick through the things
that we are exposed to every
day," Duff says. "But we perk
up when we hear something relevant." Being relevant—and thus being heard
above the din—is perhaps the highest
priority of an advertiser.
What makes an ad relevant? "At the
core," Duff notes, "you look at a brand
and say that it should communicate
specific, constant things, things that
don't change over time. But you need
to communicate that brand messaging
in a way that's current and relevant.
Advertising is culturally situated—which
is why I can show an ad from the '70s
or '80s and my students just laugh. The
ads might still hold the same idea for now,
but the ads themselves are so situated in
a time and place that they don't seem
relevant anymore."
The content of an ad is not the only
consideration as to its relevancy with an
audience. Connection planning, which
focuses on how companies connect with
their existing and potential customers
through ad placement, is a growing
consideration as well. The process has
evolved from just knowing, say, what
demographic reads Woman's Day to
understanding the mindset of readers
or viewers who encounter their ads. "Connection planning brings in the
emotional context," Duff says. "People
have shifting identities. Through
connection planning, companies can
better understand who people are while
they are consuming their media or while
they are reading their message."
The best ads, Duff says, understand a
product from a consumer's point of view. "Advertising has increasingly moved from
this idea that everything is about our
product to maybe it's a little bit about
you, too."
And that includes, she says, the
realization that people might have a
relationship with the product or store or
brand. Again, just like gift-giving, it's all
about relationships.
–Tom Hanlon
