Bloomberg Businessweek
"‘Tis the Season to Analyze Gift Giving"
Dec. 5, 2011

Marketing professor Susan Broniarczyk has found that choosing a gift for a friend or family member often presents a predicament. She and co-author Morgan Ward, an assistant professor at Southern Methodist University, discovered that bestowing a distasteful gift tends to be very unsettling for the giver. In its roundup of business school research on gift-giving, BusinessWeek explains:

When gift givers buy presents that friends and family like but that they don't care for themselves, they end up spending more money, according to research by Morgan K. Ward, assistant professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business, and Susan M. Broniarczyk, marketing professor at University of Texas-Austin's McCombs School of Business. They discovered that when people buy gifts that counter their own tastes, they tend to buy something else for themselves to reaffirm their likes. The two use the example of a father, who buys a hip-hop CD for his son, feeling compelled to purchase a Keith Richards CD he sees at the counter. These researchers suggest checking one's ego at the door to save money.

Broniarczyk and Ward discovered that individuals “are threatened by presenting a gift that challenges their own self-concept.” After the purchase of a gift they don’t like, their research shows, gift givers will go out of their way to reestablish their true identity.

Gift givers often display physical clues when their self-image is threatened. Indications of threat include chewing on lips, nervous smiling, averting or narrowing eyes, flinching and sneering. Body language clues include fidgeting, playing with hair, biting nails, stiff posture or crossed arms. Broniarczyk says that “Longhorn football fans who had to purchase a Texas A&M coffee mug for a close friend would actually hold the mug away from themselves as they approached the checkout counter.”

Broniarczyk and Ward suggest less expensive methods for reaffirming one’s identity like picking a favorite wrapping paper or including a personal note with the gift.

Read the full article with more insights on consumer behavior on Businessweek’s website.