AbstractPerhaps the most common form of prosocial behavior that consumers engage in is gift giving. In doing so, consumers presumably act in the best interests of recipients, by giving gifts that they believe recipients will cherish. That said, the results of five lab and field studies demonstrate that consumers sometimes do the opposite: they give gifts they do not believe to be best. Specifically, the present work shows that gift givers desire to feel unique and thus refrain from giving gifts ...
AbstractConsumers pursue goals by selecting means to their attainment. They might pursue a goal to be healthy, for instance, by choosing healthy snacks or standing rather than sitting at their desk. Making an initial goal-congruent choice, however, often leaves people less motivated to continue pursuing the goal afterward, resulting in a variety of undesirable behaviors (e.g., eating a substantial piece of cake). The current research proposes a novel way to reduce this post-choice goal disengage...
AbstractConsumers often have multiple goals that are active simultaneously and make choices to satisfy those goals. However, no work to date has studied how people choose when all available options serve a goal (e.g., a choice-set goal) that conflicts with another goal they hold (e.g., an incidental goal). We demonstrate that in such contexts, consumers are more likely to choose the option that is most instrumental for attaining the choice-set goal, even when that option poses the greatest viola...
Abstract Sentimental value is the value derived from an emotionally-laden item's associations with significant others, or special events or times in one's life. The present research demonstrates that when faced with the choice between sentimentally valuable gifts and gifts with superficial attributes that match the preferences of the recipient, givers give the latter much more often than recipients would prefer to receive such gifts. This asymmetry appears to be driven by givers feeling relative...
We propose that many giver-recipient discrepancies in the gift-giving literature can be explained, at least partially, by the notion that when evaluating the quality of a gift, givers primarily focus on the moment of exchange, whereas recipients primarily focus on how valuable a gift will be once owned. In this review, we summarize the variety of errors givers make and, more critically, position these errors within our newly developed framework. We hope this framework will provide a single point...
AbstractGift givers balance their goal to please recipients with gifts that match recipient preferences against their own goal to signal relational closeness with gifts that demonstrate their knowledge of the recipient. Five studies in a gift registry context show that when close (vs. distant) givers receive attribution for the gifts they choose, they are more likely to diverge from the registry to choose items that signal their close relationships. The authors find that close givers’ divergence...
#1Lisa A. Cavanaugh(SC: University of Southern California)H-Index: 11
This article provides an orientation to how relationships have been studied in consumer behavior and discusses four ways in which close relationships shape consumption. First, close relationships influence individual choices through social and mating motives. Second, close relationships impact choices made for others , such as gift-giving and resource sharing. Third, close others regularly are involved in joint consumption (e.g., within couples or families). Fourth, reminding individuals of clos...