Do you enjoy receiving or gifting gifts more?
Receiving
Gifting
Your response has been submitted.
Planted on:
20 Dec 2022
| Last tended on:
4 Oct 2024
Planted on:
20 Dec 2022
Last tended on:
4 Oct 2024
This was the question that started the rabbit hole. My hypothesis was that people enjoyed gifting more. However, I felt the gifting experience is usually skewed in favour of the receiving end because we want whoever that's receiving the gift to be happy.
I wondered if we could make the gifting experience more suited for the giver instead. Rather than think about what the receiver wants, it's about what you enjoy to give. Thus naturally the first question was to find out where the majority lies... Team Gifter or Receiver?
Team Gifter vs Team Receiver
Pop culture, literature, and media have created the idea that women enjoy and expect gifts, particularly in romantic relationships. Movies, advertisements, and even fairy tales depict men "showering" women with gifts as a demonstration of love, reinforcing the stereotype.
Contrary to this, the analysis shows there were more ladies that liked to gift rather than receive – 26.8% of Team Gift vs 23.2% of Team Receiver were female*. Meanwhile there were 11% more males in Team Gift than Receive. It might not really be accurate to assume it is because of this stereotype, but I’d imagine it made men feel like they needed to take up the role as gifters.
For everyone’s sake, let us debunk this.
An Ideal Gift
What are the qualities that make an ideal gift?
I think functional and emotional factors were the two main qualities I came up with naturally, but I was struggling to think of the third one.
Well, this assumes there's even a third one to make up the Venn diagram of "an ideal gift". So I left it to the poll to decide.
Submit button under Results
Your response has been submitted.
A criteria for a third quality would be if it ranks as important as function & emotion.
The remaining two options were "currency" factors. Money and time seemed like worthy components as they imply there is a cost.
If any of these aspects really boost the gift’s impact and make it as meaningful as the other two, then they definitely deserve a spot in the Venn diagram.
Interestingly, it looks like the Venn diagram should just have two circles: one for functional and the other for emotional. This means that an "Ideal Gift" for most people would be something that has both functional and emotional qualities. However, if you're not aiming for an ideal gift, your best bet is to prepare an emotional gift.
I was curious about another stereotype – women are more in touch of their emotions than men, and therefore by extension would prefer more emotional gifts. However, the data tells a different story. Women show an almost even distribution across all gift categories, suggesting that emotional preferences aren't as dominant as the stereotype suggests.
Meanwhile a notable difference is observed among males—23.5% prefer receiving functional gifts, yet only 15.2% give them. This gap may stem from assumptions about what the recipient would value, leading men to give what they think others expect rather than what aligns with their own preferences.
An interesting extension of this study would be to include qualitative responses by asking, "Why is this quality the most important to you in an ideal gift?"
Using those two questions, I realised I could analyse for another result – are people’s most important quality for gifting and receiving the same?
Unfortunately, there is a behavioural inconsistency for nearly half of us. When someone gives you an emotional gift, there is a 52.6% chance that they want an emotional gift in return.
In reality, it's almost a coin toss, making reciprocity an unreliable way to determine what kind of gifts they prefer. Humans are complicated, don’t assume & communication is key 😂
Submit button under Results
Your response has been submitted.
Experiential Gifts
I think everyone can empathise with receiving gifts we don’t want.
Sure, we can try to reframe the gift by appreciating the thought behind it, but let’s be honest—we’d rather not. Cue the flashbacks of mugs and plush toys that ended up stashed in the back of my cupboard 🫠.
While working on this, a friend told me their family has a shared cupboard for unwanted gifts, where anyone can take an item to “regift” later. I thought that was pretty clever—it gives those unwanted presents a second chance rather than being immediately dumped.
I’ve been thinking about how we can make gifting more sustainable, and I figured that gifting experiences could be the way to go. But since experiences can be so varied, this poll was more to get an idea for myself, and also nudge others to consider shifting away from material objects as gifts.
I was actually surprised that volunteering didn’t rank better—it only got 5.3% of the votes. Personally, I think it would be fun to receive a volunteer stint as a gift because it would be very unexpected. For my birthday, I really wanted to donate blood but I was rejected for not having enough iron (b00o0oo, next year maybe).
Results
I started out this study wondering if we could make the gifting experience more suited for the giver instead. As the majority (57.3%) prefer gifting gifts, I believe it is time to rethink Gift Culture :) How might we create a gifting experience that is enjoyable for people looking for gifts?
Gifting is sometimes stressful to me because I want to “get it right”, which implies there is a “correct” answer. What if we could always get the “correct” answer? Rather than worrying so much about how the recipient might react, it is the enjoyment you get when choosing a gift for someone (this is based off a stoicism approach where the control is in the gift-giver's hands). In this way, there’s no such thing as a “wrong” gift.
Not all required questions are answered, please check through before submitting.
Your response has been submitted.
Another potential use of this survey outcome is to help you look for gifts, particularly for people you don’t know very well. By leaning toward emotional-type gifts, you can manage the risk of disappointment, as these gifts tend to resonate more universally.
"Do unto others what you want others to do unto you" is not applicable in gifting. It is a bad indicator of the type of gifts someone would like to gift or receive. So if a friend gives you snacks, they might actually prefer to receive cards instead.
Data Hygiene
Data was collected through Instagram Stories between 9-10th December 2022, analysed using Google Sheets. Results posted on 20 December 2022.
Overall stats:
Total Respondents = 124
Female = 66
Male = 48
*Gendered analysis has been weighted since there were more female to male respondents.
Eg: Weighted Value = Number of Team Receiver who are Females * Total Answered for Q1 / No. of Female respondents for Q1.
I feel like there’s probably a limitation to this weighted method but I don’t really know either. Please hit me up if you have a better method for weighting numbers!
If you have read this far, you would have noticed that I had survey segments interspaced through the essay. I might revisit this topic in the future using the website survey results if there are any new insights.
Limitation
I believe everything is on a spectrum so saying you’re “Team Gift” doesn’t mean you don’t like receiving. A few people were stumped by how to interpret the question and for participants, I understand, it’s not binary. An ideal data collection method would be to ask on a Likert scale which I chose not to as the poll feature on IG isn’t good for that (they only allow 4 options).
Since this was conducted as an Instagram poll, it’s limited to my demographic which is mainly a range of 1993-2001, a mix of early Gen Zs and late Millennials. Hence extrapolate results at your own risk.
The nature of Instagram stories are bite sized and capturing attention especially for surveys are tough, so questions are limited to max 5. Questions are all adapted for quantity based. As much as I’d like to ask “why”, engagement would be tough.
Further Questions
-
How can I gift something that I as the gifter, would be happy with?
-
How long does it take for you to get rid of a gift you don’t like?
-
What part of the gifting process do you dislike the most?
-
What do you think of when deciding a gift for someone?