Gift Giving Perceptions in Romantic Relationships: A Consumer Behavior Perspective

Abstract

Purpose It is commonly seen that people, often times, tend to stress while buying gifts for their significant others. However, there are also people that enjoy the whole experience. Why is it stressful for some, and enjoyable for others? Why does it seem like an obligation to some, but pleasurable to others? Researchers previously showed how attachment orientations of an individual play a role in determining whether they are likely to percieve gift giving as pleasureable or as a chore. The findings were taken a step ahead by also incorporating the impact of a “gift recipient’s attachment orientation” on gift giver’s perception of gift giving. The purpose of this research is to extend their findings, firstly, by incorporating both situational (relationship satisfaction) and stable (self-esteem) factors into the research, secondly, by collecting data from people in an established romantic relationship (engaged or married) and thirdly, by confirming previous findings in an eastern context for the first time. Research Questions This thesis investigated the impact of gift giver’s attachment orientation on gift giving perception, while also incorporating the impact of gift recipient’s attachment orientation as well as stable and situational factors i.e. self-esteem and relationship satisfaction. Method and Analysis This research employed a quantitative research strategy, and online surveys were conducted for the collection of data. The respondents were asked to read a description of the gift recipient and fill the online questionnaire while keeping that imaginary gift recipient in mind. There were four variants of the questionnaire, and each variant was filled by a different group of respondents. The variants were differentiated on the basis of gift recipient’s attachment orientation i.e. low anxiety, high anxiety, low avoidance, and high avoidance. The research was divided in two studies based on the survey experiments i.e. study 1 incorporated low and high anxiety of gift recipient, and study 2 incorporated low and high avoidance of gift recipient. Study 1 had 104 respondents, whereas study 2 had 120 respondents. Four models were conceptualized to test the hypothesized relationships. A series of preliminary tests were conducted first to test for appropriateness of data, followed by “Confirmatory Factor Analysis”, and analysis with Hayes’ Process Macro in SPSS to test the hypotheses. Results Preliminary data analysis showed the appropriateness of collected data whereas confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the reliability and validity of all constructs. The results for study 1 showed that gift giver’s avoidance has a direct positive impact on gift giver’s pleasure in eastern context with respondents from established relationships, however, it has negative indirect effect through relationship satisfaction. Moreover, it was also found that gift giver’s anxiety does not have any direct impact on gift giver’s obligation in this context, however it does have a positive indirect impact through self-esteem. Gift recipient anxiety was also found to significantly moderate the relationship between gift giver’s anxiety and gift giver’s obligation. The results for study 2 showed that gift giver’s avoidance has a negative indirect effect (through relationship satisfaction) on gift giver’s pleasure when the gift recipient is an individual with low avoidance, whereas it has a positive indirect effect when the gift recipient is a high avoidance individual. Gift giver’s anxiety, on the other hand, was found to have a direct positive impact on gift giver’s obligation, as well as an indirect effect through self-esteem. The indirect effect of gift giver’s anxiety on gift giver’s obligation through relationship satisfaction was found to be significant (and positive) only when the gift recipient is an individual with high avoidance