When Bad Gifts Happen to Good People

We’ve all been there. You anxiously open a holiday gift only to find a dud inside. Or worse, a gift that makes you feel bad about yourself, like a mother-in-law giving her childless daughter-in-law a pregnancy test. Don’t laugh. This was one of the actual responses in “Thanks, I Guess: What Consumers Complain About When They Complain About Gifts,” a research study by Deborah Y. Cohn, associate professor at the School of Management.

In the study, Cohn noted that people who give bad gifts often do so intentionally, and that retailers and others can benefit from a potentially poisonous situation by creating positive experiences for recipients of bad gifts. “Marketers who encourage buying gifts that will not be returned or assist gift recipients in doing something positive with unwanted gifts are sure to be the winners in the retail gift-buying season,” she said. For example, giving recipients an easy way to donate unwanted gifts to charity is one way to create a positive experience.

Now that the gift-giving season is here, Cohn’s research comes just in time. Prior research has assumed that bad gifts are the result of mistakes. Not so, says Cohn. Instead, she has discovered through in-depth interviews and data available via online message boards that people intentionally give bad gifts. As part of her research, she identified five categories of intentional bad gift-giving:

• Gifts that threaten the recipient’s self-concept (like the pregnancy test mentioned above).
• Gifts given so that the giver can benefit from them, such as a sports-loving husband giving his wife a big-screen television.
• Gifts explicitly meant to offend, often in a passive-aggressive way.
• Gifts given out of obligation.
• Gifts given to allow the giver to brag or “outgift” someone else, such as grandparents giving their grandchild a gift the parents specifically vetoed.

This holiday season, a typical shopper is expected to buy 14 gifts. Let’s hope they all bring some joy to the recipients. In the meantime, here's to a happy holiday season free of bad gifts!

Read more about the study.