Female-friend gift-card giving

ABSTRACT

Given the continuing strong growth of gift cards in the marketplace, we offer three studies focused on female-friend gift-card giving. Retrospective accounts indicate difficult-to-buy-for recipients, previous gift-card history, greater physical distances, and closer relationships between the parties were associated with greater levels of friend gift-card giving. In two scenarios, giver attitudes toward giving gift cards, difficult-to-buy-for and further-away recipients, as well as gift-card history between the parties tended to increase gift-card likelihoods (versus physical gifts), while close relationships with recipients decreased the likelihood of gift-cards (versus physical gifts) given. Additionally, four unique friend gift-card giving segments are identified and validated.

Notes

¹ Non-immediate family members as well as friends are included to expand the giving likelihoods somewhat since many gifts may involve siblings and cousins, as well as family members of these individuals. However, the topic is referred to as “friend giving” to simplify the issues. The idea is to avoid parents and children who may be using gift cards quite differently (e.g. for college student funds).

² The “giving” of gift cards is the focus of this study with the assumption that the giver also purchased the card, which is the most likely situation; while it is possible that someone else bought the gift card for them to give, the most logical connection is assumed – that of a friend-giving situation in which the giver also purchased it.

³ Although this construct is visualized as applying to both giving and receiving actions, the terminology used throughout focuses on giving for simplicity.

⁴ In H5a total gift cards given to friends is tested. In H5b likelihood to give a gift card relative to a physical gift is tested (i.e. likelihood to give a gift card rather than a physical gift).

⁵ m-turk is used for all studies, however the participants are different in each study.

⁶ The gift criterion in Studies 2 and 3 was loosened from 3 gifts to 2 gifts to be more inclusive of the population.

⁷ The threshold of eliminating responses with 32+ gift cards given was retained from study 1 for consistency in studies 2 and 3.

⁸ Although there was a lack of main effects for difficult-to-buy-for recipients and distance in the Study 3 scenario (Study 3b), these two variables did interact, supporting their relevance in this study.

Additional information

Funding

This research was approved by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Institutional Review Board [IRB approval: 12-191].