Immediately unpacked, immediately resold. They may smile when unwrapping, but almost half of French people are preparing to resell their Christmas presents, according to the Ipsos barometer from last year. And according to this same institute, 34% of guests give in to the convenience of gift cards. Which places the latter in third position among the most offered gifts. The message seems clear: we are poor, even selfish, Santas.
Ideally, we view the exchange of gifts as a rare way to please our loved ones. With a nuance. “When we give gifts, we want to make the recipients happy the moment they open them”deciphers Julian Gavi, professor of marketing at the University of West Virginia, from Vox. It is therefore precisely by focusing on enthusiasm during the fateful unpacking that a first gap is created between the expectations of each person. The offerer thinks about the reaction in the moment. The recipient wants a gift that is more meaningful or useful in the long term.
Failed gifts certainly sometimes have very innocuous explanations. We can overestimate a person’s interest in a passion or a football club that they have told us about once or twice. Just as it is possible to simply know the person too little. It’s hard to guess that giving a hand-knitted sweater would bring back a bad childhood memory.
But studies show that there are unfortunately more cynical reasons for bad gifts. For example, some people know exactly what the recipient wants (maybe they received a list) but still opt for something else in order to appear original, explains Julian Gavi. The study he co-wrote also discovered that many people refuse to buy a gift they might want. It would therefore be less feasible to offer a new generation connected watch if you yourself own an older version.
Handmade and personalization hit the mark
Deborah Cohn, another professor of marketing, this time at the New York Institute of Technology, identified five types of failed gifts. Besides the pure and simple malice of those who want to upset the recipient, there is laziness: we come with a gift without thinking much because it is above all the gateway to eating smoked salmon.
But the most aggressive of failed gifts is undoubtedly the one that tries to impose a certain idea on the recipient. This is of course an opportunity to reproduce stereotypes: there is no shortage of stories of parents who only give dresses or dolls to their daughter and toy soldiers or video games to their son. The offerer then does not have in mind to please the recipient (whose desires he knows perfectly well), but to constrain him to his own desires or conceptions.
Among the types of failed gifts is also the famous “I’m giving my son a games console so I can play it myself”. Double narcissistic utility: this type of present often allows you to shine as the most expensive one of the evening – or of the morning. These gifts are therefore neither mistakes nor innocent. “It’s selfishnessasserts Deborah Cohn. You think more about yourself than the recipient. And everyone sees it.”
So how do you become a good Santa? While, obviously, tastes in gift giving vary from one person to another, researchers identify trends that hit the mark more easily. For Julian Gavi, the Sentimental gifts are often underestimated by giverswhile a handmade object or one linked to a shared memory always pleases. He adds that a gift is appreciated even more when it is given unexpectedly. The fact that it does not owe its existence to any social convention – whether it is Christmas, a birthday or any other celebration – gives it more value.
Being an excellent offerer also requires putting yourself in the receiver’s shoes. It takes a conscious effort to ask yourself what this no one in particular would like to be offered – not what you, or anyone else, would want in the same situation. So it probably doesn’t help that stating precisely what one would like and dislike receiving is somewhat taboo.
Source: www.slate.fr
