Who cares more? A giver–recipient asymmetry in the importance of selecting a good gift

Abstract

Purpose

Consumer researchers have studied a number of asymmetries between gift-givers and gift-recipients. However, one unexplored potential asymmetry concerns gift-givers’ and gift-recipients’ perceptions of the importance of selecting a good (vs. bad) gift. This paper aims to study this uninvestigated facet of gift-giving.

Design/methodology/approach

Five experimental studies tested the hypotheses. In each study, participants assumed the role of giver or recipient and read a gifting scenario. Study 1 explored participants’ views on the importance of selecting a good gift by asking them directly. Studies 2-4 instead operationalized the importance of selecting a good gift through participants’ choices between gifts. Studies 1-4 also examined our proposed mechanism pertaining to givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift. Study 5 examined a theoretically relevant boundary condition: the nature of the giver-recipient relationship.

Findings

Givers regard it as more important than recipients that a good gift be selected. Critically, this mismatch can manifest as givers making choices that do not align with recipients’ preferences. Drawing on contextualized self-enhancement theory, this study shows that this asymmetry is driven primarily by givers overestimating the negative implications of giving a bad gift as opposed to overestimating the positive implications of giving a good one. Consistent with this account, the effect attenuates when the giver and recipient have a negative (vs positive) relationship and thus givers are not concerned with the negative implications of giving a poor gift.

Research limitations/implications

The findings enrich the field’s understanding of gift-giving psychology by introducing contextualized self-enhancement theory to the gift-giving literature and demonstrating that givers worry more than they should about the negative implications of giving a bad gift. This study also sheds light on the important role that the nature of the giver–recipient relationship plays in gift-giving phenomena. Limitations of this work are that there are some potential boundary conditions and control variables that the authors did not explore, such as potential cultural differences and the income levels of the giver and recipient.

Practical implications

This research suggests that gift-givers should not worry as much as they do about the negative implications of giving a bad gift. In many cases, things may not turn out as bad as givers anticipate when they deliver a less-than-ideal gift. This study also shows that givers sometimes make choices that do not match recipients’ preferences, out of a fear of the negative implications that may arise from giving a bad gift.

Originality/value

This research adds to the gift-giving literature by studying a new facet of gift-giving: whether it is more important to givers or recipients that a good gift be selected. In addition, this work introduces contextualized self-enhancement theory to the gift-giving literature and documents two new asymmetries between givers and recipients: first, givers put more importance on the selection of a good gift than recipients; second, givers overestimate the negative implications of giving a bad gift.

Citation

Mu, Y. and Givi, J. (2025), "Who cares more? A giver–recipient asymmetry in the importance of selecting a good gift", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 59 No. 1, pp. 59-85. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-12-2022-0853