Gift Giving Guy

Shopping is an act of hope. Buy a gift and you presume the dollars you spend now you’ll replenish in the future. Despite all of the marketing machinations, shopping helps us fulfill needs: expressing ourselves, being social and having fun. Lee Eisenberg advances these ideas in his book, Shoptimism: Why the American Consumer Will Keep on Buying No Matter What. Like endless options at a mega-mall, this book catalogs hundreds of factoids and presents views from academics, marketing professionals, and consumerism critics.

Here are excerpts from Shoptimism, offering insights on gift giving.

• “We give gifts ‘coded’ to express ‘positive emotions,’ depending on the occasion. For birthdays, housewarmings, at the end-of-year holidays, we give gifts coded ‘Joy.’ For graduations and retirements, we give gifts coded ‘Pride.’ For hospitalizations and going-away parties, we give gifts coded ‘Hope.’ And on Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day — also at funerals — we give gifts coded ‘Affection.’ And, yes, on all of the above as well as other occasions, we give gifts coded (you can always tell) ‘Obligation.’”
• “The reasons we bestow gifts, according to respondents: they enable us to express pleasure or show friendship (42 percent); they are means by which we obtain or bestow pleasure (27 percent); because we feel obligated to (15 percent).”
• “Money — not china or kitchen appliances — has become the wedding gift of choice, a development that the Romantic buyer in me takes as unwelcome news.”
• “Each of us, on average, spends a couple of thousand dollars a year on gifts, roughly half of it during the ‘Hard Eight,’ that is the eight-week holiday shopping season.”
• “Lisa is a friend who lives in New York City, a talented novelist, a huge-hearted wife and mom, smart, funny, sardonic, immensely kind…. Everyday shopping leaves her cold…. But there’s one kind of Buy at which Lisa excels, and that’s gifting. I ask Lisa whether she gives gift cards. Yes, turns out she does, but only as birthday presents her kids give to their friends, cards exchangeable for music and books. Otherwise, when Lisa shops for gifts she says she looks for the ‘unexpected.’ Stalking the unexpected requires a lively imagination and a grasp of the quirks of one’s circle of gift getters. It’s ‘an all-year-round, any-kind-of-weather sport,’ she reports. ‘Because the interests and tastes of my friends and family vary, the hunt for great gifts takes me from clothing boutiques to electronics stores, crafts fairs to eBay.’ But where she buys takes a backseat to what she buys. ‘I would like to think that if the presents I purchase are all laid out on a table, unwrapped, the people for whom they were intended would know instantly which presents were theirs.’”
• “Lisa uncannily reflects what experts say are the keys to gift-giving prowess. [Professor] Russell Belk… says that a quintessential gift satisfies six criteria, which together confirm that Lisa doesn’t just give good gift, she gives perfect gift…”
• “1. The perfect gift requires us to make an ‘extraordinary sacrifice.’ By ‘sacrifice,’ Belk doesn’t mean that we need to pawn our departed mother’s handmade quilts to help pay for the $7,000 doghouse with an Italian leather armchair (Neiman Marcus offered one in a recent Christmas gift catalog). ‘Sacrifice’ needn’t call for financial sacrifice. In Lisa’s case, sacrifice comes when she puts aside a challenging section of the novel she’s writing to make time to explore an antiques barn, where she once found a 1940s telephone for her daughter, a thoroughly modern adolescent who finds movies and Broadway musicals of that period irresistible.”
• “2. The giver of a perfect gift wishes ‘solely to please the recipient.’ The perfect gift isn’t one that begs for reciprocation or proclaims that you’re one hell of a big-time spender. The perfect gift, Belk says, is about the recipient, not about you. Lisa gets that. One year she came upon a mourning locket offered on eBay. There was an ‘H’ engraved on it. Lisa’s stepmother’s late beloved dog was named Harry. Lisa bought the piece, placed a picture of Harry inside, and gave it to her stepmother on Christmas morning.”
• “3. The perfect gift is a ‘luxury.’ By ‘luxury,’ Belk doesn’t mean that the perfect gift need be spattered with VLs [Louis Vuitton] or interlocking Cs [Chanel]. In this context a luxury is anything that isn’t strictly a necessity. To buy and give someone a pair of underwear or a mop and a bucket is thoughtful if the recipient’s in need of them. But gifts such as these don’t exactly communicate that the recipient is in some way extraordinary….”
• “4. The perfect gift is appropriate to the recipient. All of Lisa’s above-cited gifts qualify as appropriate and then some. As was the canvas tote she once bought for her friend Cathy. On the side were the words ‘It Is Was It Is,’ a phrase that Cathy happens to use inveterately. What can be more appropriate than letting someone know you actually listen to what they say, right down to their asides and throwaway lines?”
• “5. The perfect gift is ‘surprising.’ If surprise weren’t universally appreciated, Belk says, gift wrap would never have come into being. Surprise is why we love getting presents on days that aren’t birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Mother’s or Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Grandparents’ Day, or any of the Sell Side-manufactured giving days. Last year Lisa’s daughter Elizabeth performed in a school production of The Sound of Music. While such an occasion doesn’t require a gift, many of us buy unsurprising bouquets for our pint-sized leading ladies and would-be prima ballerinas. Lisa didn’t spring for a bunch of carnations; she bought Elizabeth a pair of glove forms. Why? ‘So I could give her a big hand.’”
• “6. The perfect gift is one that the recipient desires. Belk says that we don’t have to jump through hoops to give a perfect gift. Santa didn’t get to be Santa by ripping children’s wish lists into shreds. The words ‘It’s just what I always wanted!” are confirmation that you’ve bagged a perfect gift.”

Related Post: Gift Flow, or What Makes a Great Gift