Stephanie Hofmann
When I shop for presents I often find things I like for myself. And, vice-versa. Not infrequently, I buy two of the same items (or with slight variations) so I can keep one and give one as a gift.
I’ve felt some shame on these occasions, berating myself for a lack of self-control. My fear is that those on the receiving end will feel that I did not look hard to find a gift special to them. So sometimes I share that I have the same scarf or bag at home and sometimes I don’t. It turns out I shouldn’t have worried. According to research out of the University of Wisconsin School of Business, buying the same thing for yourself makes the gift even more special to the recipient. There’s even a name for it: companionizing.
“Recipients end up liking the gift more because it’s shared,” says Evan Polman, a UW marketing professor, who conducted the research with Sam Maglio, a marketing professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. They published the results of their study in July in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Participants in the computerized survey rated how likeable, thoughtful and considerate they found hypothetical gifts. When participants were told the givers had bought the same gift for themselves, the test-takers liked the gifts more.
Why is any of this important? First, because a lot of money goes into gift-buying in this country.
“According to a recent report, Americans spent more money on gifts in 2016 than the total yearly GDP [gross domestic product] of Sweden,” Polman and Maglio write in their study. “However, people too often give gifts that recipients do not want … In economic terms, gift-giving represents billions of dollars of deadweight loss annually because recipients value and sell their gifts for less than the prices paid by givers.”
Moreover, gift-giving drives a lot of angst, especially around the holidays, says Polman. “It creates a lot of consternation for people.” Gift-givers are “very worried that recipients aren’t going to like their gifts,” he adds.
The vast number of items to choose among for gifts does not help. Neither do assumptions about the worth of gifts. Do you spend more money on something because you think the recipient will like the gift better? Save your pennies, advises Polman.
“That’s a reasonable correlation but it’s not true,” he says. “Recipients are happy to receive any kind of gift. There’s not that much of a bump when recipients get more expensive gifts…. For them it’s more about receiving a gift.” The recipients don’t know the many choices or options you considered. So they cannot compare what was rejected to what was eventually bought. Their comparison, says Polman, “is receiving no gift” at all.
