christmas gift giving involvement

Christmas gift giving involvementPeter Clarke

Department of Marketing, Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

AbstractPurpose – The act of giving a gift at Christmas is a form of consumption that invokes different levels of involvement. The purpose of this paper is toexplore and measure involvement in parental Christmas gift giving and giving branded items as gifts.Design/methodology/approach – The required information was gathered via a self-administered survey method distributed to parents with at leastone child between the ages of three and eight years. A questionnaire package was delivered to five participating schools and seven kindergartens forchildren to take home to their parents. As a result, 450 acceptable cases were subjected to a process of exploratory factor and confirmatory analysis.Findings – The findings indicate that there is no significant relationship between involvement in giving gifts and involvement in giving brands as gifts,which suggests that it is important for parents to give gifts but not involving for parents to give popular brand names as gifts. In addition, the findingsindicate that traditional measures of involvement require modifications that reflect semantic issues as well as reliability and validity issues.Research limitations/implications – Children between the ages of three and eight years are most likely to be concerned with the Santa myth; it isalso a time of concern for parents and has implications for promotional and marketing activities of brands targeted at children.Originality/value – This research offers insights into involvement within the intangible context of gift giving and giving brands as gifts. It alsocontributes to the semantic differences between two forms of involvement and contributes to the ongoing involvement-importance debate.

Keywords Christmas, Parents, Brands

Paper type Research paper

An executive summary for managers and executive

readers can be found at the end of this article.

Introduction

Christmas is the peak of consumerism in western cultures

(Caplow and Williamson, 1980) where the Christmas

celebration, the attendant images, commercial intent and

religious values are intertwined to create an important,

relevant and unique consumption occasion for giving gifts.

Importantly, children are encouraged to request gifts, parents

want to give gifts and under the guise of Santa Claus, they

respond to requests by giving gifts that they deem

appropriate.One term that features strongly in consumer behaviour is

involvement. Parents’ involvement in giving gifts, and their

involvement in giving brands as gifts, have not been the focus

of research and therefore, presents a gap in the involvement

literature. In particular there is little direct evidence relating

to involvement in gift giving as a consumption object.

Specifically, Sherry (1983) calls for the development of a

theory relating to gift giving and involvement. In line with

consumer behaviour theory, the concept of involvement is an

important area because a person’s level of involvement has

ramifications for information gathering and decision making.Christmas is an ideal occasion and natural field setting to

extend knowledge regarding both involvement and intangible

aspects of gift giving theory (O’Cass and Clarke, 2002;

Sherry, 1983). In addition, the literature has paid only slight

attention to developing a theoretical and empirical approach

that helps to understand Christmas consumption. Thus, any

new research related to gift theory topics and involvement in

intangible consumption objects is important.

Consumption

One encompassing definition of consumption is provided by

Csikszentmihalyi (2000), who argues:

Consumption satisfies our basic existence needs for survival as well asexperiential rewards that result in temporary, positive moods that accruethrough goal-directed, purposeful behaviours.

Apart from survival needs, consumption also satisfies more

abstract needs that include cultural, social and personal

elements that attach particular or specific meanings to

consumption objects that are symbolic of taste, lifestyle and

identity (Dittmar et al., 1996; Solomon, 1983).

Consumption, therefore, becomes a culturally universal

function that symbolises security, expresses the self-concept

of the consumer, signifies the connection to society and holds

some importance in cementing social relationships (Elliott,

1997; Mittal, 1990; Wallendorf and Arnould, 1988). Another

view of consumption is of a varied physical deed that requires

an amount of effort and embraces traditional and self-evident

activities that are shaped by the properties of the product or

object (Holt, 1995); this includes gift shopping, selection and

presentation. Some consumers value the consumption

experience above possessions (Hopkinson and Pujari, 1999).

To many people, consumption through gift giving may be a

means of creating tangibility from the sacred interpersonal

bonds that, by nature, are felt but not seen (Hirschman and

LaBarbera, 1989).There is a Santa Claus Village theme park (in Rovaniemi,

Finland) where tourists consume the intangible attraction of

Christmas, and it is meaningful to have a photograph taken

next to the sign in the village that proclaims the location of the

Arctic Circle. Pretes (1995) argues that the Santa Claus

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Village combines nostalgia and fantasy for families and

children where “Santa Claus and his village become

simultaneously a commodity, spectacle and representation:Christmas is available in a consumable form”. Such secular

consumption incorporates the self-gratification and sensory

pleasures of the material world that arises from thosecommercial activities that influence taste, lifestyle and

identity (Hirschman and LaBarbera, 1989). Likewise, thepositive affect arising from secular and interpersonal

relationships with others maintains and influences the

Christmas celebrations to the extent that most interactionsbecome a central icon of mutual experience (Belk et al., 1989;

Clark, 1995). Subsequently, Christmas is generally portrayedas a consumption experience and is the peak of consumerism

in western cultures. Apart from the belief that consumption

objects are mainly tangible products, attending churchservices (Sheth et al., 1991) and other occasions such as

Easter, holidays or Christmas have been interpreted as

consumption objects along with television advertisements andbrands.

Since Christmas is viewed as a consumption object, thenactivities such as gift selection and giving are also argued to be

Christmas consumption objects. Expressing the parent-child

relationship is a significant activity where the quality of giftselection is influenced by the perceived significance of the

giver-receiver relationship (Beatty et al., 1996) and it is animportant and involving activity for some and not so for

others. For this reason, the act of giving a gift at Christmas

appears to be a form of consumption that invokes differentlevels of involvement.

Involvement

Consumer involvement with consumption objects appears as

variations of intent and meaning that effect consumers on anongoing basis (Bloch and Richins, 1983). To this end, a

consumption object is an element of involvement

(Zaichkowsky, 1985), that does not necessarily have physicalform (Holt, 1995). Involvement has been variously described

as feelings of interest and enthusiasm (Goldsmith andEmmert, 1991), relevance or importance (Rothschild,

1984), self-relevance of purchasing activities (Slama and

Tashchian, 1985), perceived relevance of the object(Zaichkowsky, 1985), and the extent of interest and concern

(Mittal and Lee, 1989).Specifically, involvement is a state of personal relevance

associated with intrinsic interests; is at the heart of the person-

object relationship (Mano and Oliver, 1993) and is a uniquedescriptor of the relationship between a consumer and a

product category (Hughes et al., 1998). The range ofmeanings ascribed to involvement leads O’Cass (2000) to

argue that involvement constitutes the extent to which the

consumer views the consumption object as a central part oftheir life, a meaningful and engaging object in their life, and is

important to them. Apart from the numerous meanings of

involvement, there are a number of terms used to describeinvolvement types. There is situational involvement, which is

seen as a temporary concern with a high-risk product, andthere is enduring involvement, an ongoing, high or low

concern with products, which is related to brand choices.

Over the past decades involvement has been characterised by,but not limited to, such diverse terms as ego, cognitive, task

and response involvement. Notably, the variety of terms

pertaining to involvement reflects its multifaceted nature

(Mittal and Lee, 1989).

Product and decision involvement

In light of such variety, Mittal and Lee (1989) argue that

explicit distinctions exist between product involvement and

brand decision involvement because the influence of

situational variations can be identified as occurring in either

form of involvement rather than a single definable effect. As

an example Mittal and Lee (1988) suggest that a consumer is

seldom involved in the tangible product category of washing

machines, but is likely to be very involved in making the brand

selection. Mittal and Lee’s (1989, pp. 370-71) view of two

different involvement types are described thus:

Product involvement and brand-decision involvement reflect consumer

perception about two separate phenomena. The former about the place a

product occupies in a consumer’s life, and the latter about the stakes in

making a casual rather than a careful brand selection. The situational/

temporal variation is a separate dimension because both product and brand-

decision involvement can manifest situational / temporal changes.

Two independent but related meanings of involvement help

explain the differences between the two involvement forms.

First, product involvement is the interest a consumer finds in

a product class and this interest relates to important goals and

values. In the context of Christmas gift-giving, an example of

product involvement would be buying a bike, without training

wheels, for a youngster where the gift satisfies important goals

and values that represent a rite of passage for the parent, as

well as the child. Second, purchase involvement or brand

decision involvement is the interest taken in making the brand

selection. At a purchase involvement situation, the two-

wheeler purchase may be a choice between a Cyclops or

Repco brand. Although brand and decision levels are the

same, they are different from product involvement. As an

illustration, Mittal and Lee (1989) suggested that medical

procedures are delivered at a product level and the choice of

surgeon becomes a brand-level decision. Equally, a simple gift

giving decision could focus on a toy vehicle category at

product level and a Matchbox toy vehicle at brand level.Parental behaviours can be demanding or responsive and

affect their children accordingly; as such, responsive parents

offer children affective warmth, attachment and bonding,

unconditional acceptance, or non- contingent positive

reinforcement, and involvement. Consequently, parental gift

giving to their children at Christmas is a unique relationship

(Clark, 1995) and represents the values of responsive parents.

Such values describe basic, non-differentiated behaviour that

“occupies a consumer’s life” (Mittal and Lee, 1989).

However, more specific behaviours are selective and similar

to the “stakes in making a casual rather than a careful (brand)

selection” (Mittal and Lee, 1989), consequently, giving

brands as gifts relates to brand decision involvement.The underlying theme of involvement is the centricity of the

consumption object to a consumer (OO’Cass, 2000).

Therefore, in the context of this study, involvement in

giving gifts to children at Christmas is the relevance and

importance of giving gifts to children at Christmas.

Involvement in giving popular brand names as gifts to

children represents the relevance and importance of giving

popular brand names as gifts to children.

Christmas gift giving involvement

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Concept of involvement in giving gifts to children

It is important to some people to be organised, resourceful

and successful with their selection, purchase and giving of

Christmas gifts. As a consequence, people seem to plan gift

selection and purchases by placing items on lay-by (lay-away),

buying throughout the year or at sales, and storing for future

use (Fischer and Arnold, 1990; Sherry et al., 1992).

Additionally, people also enhance the giving pleasure by

wrapping the gifts, decorating a Christmas tree (Caplow,

1984), and maintaining the secrecy-surprise theme (Areni

et al., 1998). Many people value these behaviours because of

their Christmas spirit and the traditional ritual of Christmas

giving.The more self-relevant the situation appears, the more

values are evoked; these stronger feelings of self-relevance are

associated with more abstract goals (Houston and Walker,

1996). Fundamentally, consumers become involved in a

particular object or stimulus when they perceive its potential

for satisfying salient higher order, psychological needs

(O’Cass, 2000) and, in a gift giving context, higher order or

abstract goals are concerned with maintaining warm

relationships. If the focal object is personally relevant, then

the consumer feels involved with it (Celsi and Olson, 1988).

Parents may feel that the act of gift giving to children at

Christmas is a significant and meaningful act that revolves

around self-relevance and the more abstract outcomes such as

strengthening or maintaining the parent-child relationship.

Concept of involvement in giving brands as gifts

The second of the two different involvement types advocated

by Mittal and Lee (1988) relate to purchase or brand decision

involvement where a casual-careful brand selection

continuum means variant levels of brand decision

involvement. In this instance, selection infers choice or

preference based on gathering, confirming or excluding

information about the characteristics of the consumption

object that leads to the eventual purchase. Such

characteristics would cover functional, hedonic and symbolic

elements as well as risk and purchase influences.The Consumer Involvement Profile (CIP), proposed by

Laurent and Kapferer (1985), suggests that there are five

facets of involvement, of which perceived product importance

is one. Other facets include risk, probability of mis-purchase,

perceived symbolic-sign value and hedonic pleasure.

However, Browne and Kaldenberg (1997), and Mittal and

Lee (1989) argue that the facets of risk, sign and pleasure are

not an overall profile of involvement, rather they are

antecedents. It is the product that exhibits the sign value,

while pleasure value and any choice options incorporate a

risk. Therefore, the characteristics of the product encourage

importance.If products have sign value, pleasure value and risk, then so

too do brands. They exhibit these characteristics because

brands are risk reduction agents (de Chernatony and Riley,

1998) and bundles of hedonic or symbolic attributes (Bhat

and Reddy, 1998). The argument here considers that the

giving of a brand as a gift is brand decision involvement

because brand and decision involvements are the same. Brand

decision involvement is also different from product

involvement and draws on different antecedents to product

involvement (Mittal and Lee, 1989). Consequently, the series

of elements contained in the CIP become antecedents to

involvement in giving brands as gifts. In this context, thoseaspects relating to Christmas planning and gift purchase

represent a risk of giving a poor gift, while successful givingimplies hedonic value. Sign value is thus the symbolism of thebrand that attaches to either the giver or receiver.

Within the confines of the Christmas celebrations and gift-giving situations, parents would have a level of involvement

attached to giving Christmas gifts to children; suchinvolvement is contingent on parental values and therelevance of the Christmas occasion to the parents. If

parents consider giving gifts to be involving because ofenhanced relationships with their children, giving brands as

gifts may also be involving because there are benefits thataccrue to brands and parents evaluate brands on thesesattributes and make appropriate choices. The selection of

brands given as gifts by parents would be driven by thosepurchase evaluation elements contained in the CIP and,

therefore, express various levels of involvement in givingbrands as gifts.

Previous measurement and indicators ofinvolvement

Part of the body of knowledge concerning involvement relatesto the development of instruments specifically designed to

measure involvement in a consumer behaviour context. Scaleswere generally based on a semantic differential scale format(Zaichkowsky, 1985) or Likert-type formats (Mittal, 1995),

with the number of semantic items in instruments generallyranging between five and 20, while scale points ranging from

five to seven were commonly used in involvement measures.Zaichkowsky (1985) produced a 20-item Personal

Involvement Inventory (PII) scale that was applicable toproduct categories, with the reliability ranging from 0.95 to0.97. Further developmental research by Zaichkowsky (1994)

later reduced the PII to a ten-item measure (Revised PII) andreported an alpha of 0.92. The theme of importance is

evident. However some items, such as not needed by me/needed appear to be irrelevant to Christmas gift giving andthe PII, in both forms, seems unsuitable to measure

involvement in Christmas gift giving activities.Mittal (1995) compared four variants of product/purchase-

decision involvement and advocates a reduction of theZaichkowsky (1985) PII inventory of 20 items to a five-itemscale. This reduced scale is a conceptually sound measure of

involvement with a consumption object and has a highreliability (0.90). Centrality is the prime element of

involvement that is represented in measures by items suchas importance, concern and significance and appears to beapplicable across many consumption objects or occasions.

The five-item involvement scale advocated by Mittal (1995) isappropriate to measure involvement of parents in giving gifts

to their children, and a parent’s involvement in giving popularbrand names as gifts.

Methodology

The study here is a part of a larger Christmas gift giving

behaviours, intentions and attitudes study that followed threebroad, basic steps. Step one included generating a pool of

items from the literature, mass media, personal experienceand from asking others. The second step incurred the


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development of a pilot study and the third step was the

distribution of the final survey instrument. A convenience

sampling approach was employed for the pilot study and a

purposive sampling approach was used for the main study.The required information was gathered through a self-

administered survey. Respondents assessed item statements in

the refined questionnaire via a labelled, Likert-style, seven-

point response continuum where 1 is strongly disagree and 7

is strongly agree. The study has a focus on parents and the

sample frame is described as a parent with at least one child

between the ages of three and eight years and this age span

has been designated in previous parent-child sample (Rose

et al., 1998).

Pilot survey

Pilot testing is strongly recommended by survey

methodologists (Foddy, 1993; Neuman, 1997) as it allows

the researcher to focus on areas of the research that may be

unclear or ambiguous to respondents. Furthermore, it can be

used to test certain questions, while the process allows insight

into the shaping of the study (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998).

Consequently, a convenience sampling approach is invaluable

for pilot study testing because the only criterion for selection

of the sample is the availability or convenience of respondents

to the researcher.The pilot test invoked a convenience sample of parents with

three to eight year-old children and a request was sent to both

academic and administrative staff of the university through

local and main campus e-mail newsletters. These parents

represent a convenient sample group that is representative of

the “parents with children” population because they would

have the same objectives to gain income and raise a family as

those parents outside university employment. The university

also has a number of childcare centres and one centre agreed

to distribute 45 questionnaires through their parent notices

pockets. Overall a total of 90 questionnaires were delivered,

59 were returned, four partially complete. This response gave

55 useable cases, which is within the acceptable level of

between 20 to 70 respondents for pilot testing of

questionnaires (Czaja, 1998).As a result of the pilot study, both constructs relating to

involvement in giving gifts to children and involvement in

giving popular brands as gifts required structural modification

because there was evidence of a poorly interpreted item. A

subsequent factor analysis showed the involvement in giving

gifts to children as a bi-dimensional construct where the five

items had an alpha of 0.75. The item “Concerns me” was

ambiguous in this context, possibly, the concern could be with

which gift to select rather than the act of giving. The deletion

of the “concerns me” statement meant the four items offered

a reliable (Alpha 0.92), uni-dimensional measure of the

involvement in giving gifts to children and the four-item

measure was included in the final survey instrument.The factor analysis of the involvement in giving brands as

gifts also resulted in a bi-dimensional, five-item measure, with

an alpha of 0.77 and 88.2 per cent of the variation explained.

The deletion of the term “concerns me” created a four-item,

uni-dimensional measure with an alpha of 0.92, and the

unsuitability of the deleted item was illustrated by a comment

in the pilot study:

Yes it concerns me as I don’t think people should (give a popular brand nameas a Christmas gift) – if that is what you mean.

The intent of the item set is to measure the involvement of

giving a popular brand name as a Christmas gift. In this

context, the concern relates to whether to give, or not give a

brand as a gift. However, another interpretation could be

which brand to give and therefore, the item was ambiguous.This four-item measure was included in the final instrument.

Main study

The use of a purposive sampling approach was the most

effective option for the main study because the targetpopulation could not be effectively nor efficiently identified

and reached by either a convenience or a quota sample. A

number of kindergarten coordinators and principals of

independent, non-denominational schools, in adjoining

urban areas, were randomly contacted to gain their support.This exhaustive process continued until an adequate

participation pool was accumulated.The estimation of the sample size for this study was based

on the knowledge that response rates to mail surveys was

typically less than 15 per cent. Additionally, past research has

shown that school principals expect a 30 to 40 per cent

response rate for school distribution as being acceptable

(Carlson and Grossbart, 1988) and response rates generallyvary from 20 per cent upwards (e.g. Hogg et al., 1998; Kim

and Lee, 1997).During the month of November, a survey questionnaire

package containing two instruments (each of 70 questions),

instructions and a self-addressed return envelope was

delivered to the five participating schools and seven

kindergartens for the children to take home to their parents.

Overall 2,558 individual surveys were distributed and 463surveys were returned of which 13 were incomplete, thus 450

individual cases were available for analysis at an effective

return rate of 17.6 per cent. The data were cleaned and

subjected to an exploratory factor analysis.

Factor analysis results

The data were analysed by a principal component, oblique

factor rotation process using SPSS software. The four

involvement items relating to giving gifts to children at

Christmas resulted in a uni-dimensional measure, explaining87.7 per cent of variance with reliability of 0.96 (Table I).

Each item has similar factor loadings (.0.924), item means

(.5.6) and standard deviations around 1.38 to 1.48. A

composite mean for involvement in gift giving was calculatedat 5.81 with a standard deviation of 1.32.

The second measure related to a parent’s involvement in

giving brands as Christmas gifts. Again, the uni-dimensional,

four-item scale was included in the final survey instrument as

Table I Factor structure – involvement in gift giving

Involvement in giving

Christmas gifts to children: Mean Std dev.

Component

loadings

Means a lot to me 5.89 1.39 0.956

Is important to me 5.88 1.39 0.935

Is significant to me 5.67 1.48 0.930

Matters to me 5.81 1.38 0.924

Notes: Variance explained– 87.7 per cent; Cronbach alpha – 0.96


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a measure of a parent’s giving popular brand names as gifts to

their children. This four-item structure of involvement

measurement explained 88.8 per cent of the variance with a

reliability of 0.95 (Table II).As with the involvement in the gift giving measure, each

item had similar factor loadings (.0.925), however the item

means were ,1.75 and standard deviations around 1.14 to

1.18. A calculated composite mean for involvement with

brands as gifts was 1.74 and a standard deviation of 1.09.Both measures have four items each and were further

subjected to a confirmatory factory analysis (CFA).

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and CFA can be used

together because an EFA generates reliability measures and

the CFA estimates the validity of the factors. The AMOS 4

package was used to conduct confirmatory factor analyses to

validate the scales that contribute to the constructs of

involvement in giving Christmas gifts to children and

involvement in giving brands as Christmas gifts.The data were found to fit well and the factor structures

that was initially supported in the involvement in giving

brands as Christmas gifts factor. However the involvement in

giving gifts to children factor required modification and the

pairing of significant and matters to me improved the absolute

fit and the specific fit indices as outlined in Table III. The

conduct of CFA and the review of the factors showed that the

factors had not lost the original meaning or intent.The relationship between involvement in giving gifts and

involvement in giving popular brand names as gifts was

investigated using Pearson’s correlation coefficient. There was

a small to medium, but not significant correlation between the

two variables (r ¼ 0:38, n ¼ 450, p ¼ 0:418), and a paired-

sample t-test showed a significant difference between

involvement in giving gifts and involvement in giving brands

(t ¼ 251:465, df 449, p ¼ 0:000).

Discussion

Studies that feature involvement in brands abound in the

literature and have favoured tangible consumption objects

such as product categories. However, this study contributes to

the literature by the application of involvement theory to the

intangible consumption objects such as gift giving to children.

This study followed calls by Sherry (1983) for the

development of a theory relating to gift giving and

involvement. In doing so, the views of Mittal and Lee(1988) indicated that there are differences between product

and brand involvement where antecedents for productinvolvement are based on values, and brand involvement

flows from perceived brand attributes; each of theinvolvement forms are therefore different.

The results indicated that involvement in giving gifts couldbe measured through a uni-dimensional, four-item, high

reliability measure that has similar reliability as reported byMittal and Lee (1988) for a five-item measure of involvement.It appears that parents generally have a moderate involvement

in giving gifts to their children at Christmas and henceendorses the view that Christmas is an important festival of

parents giving gifts to their children. The moderate level alsosuggests that Christmas may no longer be perceived as the

major occasion for giving gifts to children. Up to the 1970s,those six weeks before Christmas accounted for 80 per cent of

the toy industry’s sales; the subsequent pursuit of year-roundmarketing, together with the advent of specialist, large volume

toy stores, meant toys received regular exposure and werereadily available outside the Christmas season (Pecora, 1998,p. 47). Parents provide or purchase rewards and treats

randomly for their children and many items, such as bicycles,audio-visual equipment or a number of toys, may be brought

throughout the year as every-day consumption items ratherthan waiting until Christmas to give the item (Pecora, 1998,

p. 47). Even for parents who find Christmas gift givinginvolving, it appears that finding a suitable alternative to the

requested gift would suffice. A substitution purchase tactic isone avenue of response to children’s requests outlined by Isler

et al. (1987).Exploring involvement in a gift-giving context contributes

to a fuller understanding of involvement and gift givingtheory. The same four-item measure was used forinvolvement in giving gifts and involvement in giving brands

as gifts, and both held similar and strong reliabilities.However, there was a marked difference between the

moderate mean of involvement in giving gifts (5.81) and thelow mean for involvement in giving brands construct (1.74).

Parents appear to consider gifts in terms of product categoryfirst and then choose the brand. Traditional art images of

Christmas gifts for children are of teddy bears, dolls, trains,helicopters, soldiers and unknown, wrapped presents

(Sundblom et al., 1997) and such images appear toperpetuate the product category interest held by parents.Parents and gift givers are actors within the Christmas ritual

(Rook, 1985) and part of this role is bound in standard openstyle questions to children such as “Would you like a doll, a

truck or a bike for Christmas?”.Although brands appear to be an integral part of adult

consumption, the results indicate that there is almost noinvolvement in giving brands as gifts to children. The results

indicate an opposite effect to that of Mittal and Lee (1988)who suggest that brand involvement is more likely to be

dominant over product category involvement because thepurchase choice is at brand level. Such negativity towards

involvement with brands reflects Isler et al. (1987) “stall orsubstitute” reaction to brand requests and is also in sympathywith the extant literature on parents’ reaction to television

advertising and its effect on children.The effect of parental preferences does not appear to carry

over to the children’s tastes because parent’s co-view

Table II Factor structure – involvement in giving brands as gifts

Involvement in giving brands as

Christmas gifts: Mean Std dev.

Component

loadings

Is significant to me 1.75 1.15 0.953

Means a lot to me 1.72 1.14 0.950

Is important to me 1.74 1.16 0.941

Matters to me 1.74 1.18 0.925

Notes: Variance explained– 87.7 per cent; Cronbach alpha – 0.96

Table III Confirmatory factor analysis results

Factor Chi-sq. df P-value GFI AGFI RMSEA

Gift involvement 4.13 1 0.042 0.99 0.95 0.08

Brand involvement 3.46 2 0.177 0.99 0.98 0.04


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television programmes with their children on a rather limited

basis (St Peters et al., 1991). Therefore, parental intervention

and values orientation should counter or confirm the

commercials’ message (van Evra, 1995). However, given the

idealism of protecting children’s integrity, parents appear to

treat television advertising as corruption of minors. This helps

to explain why parents appear to disfavour children’s brands

and therefore are not highly involved in giving brands as gifts.

Although parents buy brands to give as gifts, it is not

important to give brands as gifts.One important feature of the CFA process indicated, within

the involvement in giving gifts construct, a pairing of

“significant to me” and “matters a lot to me”, which

strengthens the central tenet of involvement as meaning

relevance and importance of a consumption object to an

individual. This CFA finding is in line with the theme that the

measure of involvement is actually a measure of importance

(Goldsmith, 2003; Schneider and Rodgers, 1996). The

argument follows that a “product category” involvement is

based on personal values and feelings, therefore, the

combination of “significance” and “matters a lot” represent

a strong combination of values. Specifically, it is important for

parents to give to children because of nurture and care values.

Although this research was exploration orientated and made

use of EFA as an appropriate factor analytical approach, the

conduct of CFA in tandem with EFA showed that neither

factor had lost meaning or intent. The findings will contribute

to the ongoing debate and research related to the concept of

involvement.

Limitations and future research

Although the literature on Christmas and giving pursues a

broad context of family and friends, the present study was

limited to gift giving involvement of parents giving to their

children because of perceptions that the gift giving traditions

of Christmas focus on children. These parents would be

expected to engage the Santa Claus myth and the

description for the sample frame as parents of three to

eight year-old children allowed the investigation of parental

involvement, branding, and gift giving to children.

Consequently, this study increases the current

understanding of the gift-giving phenomenon in general

and giving at Christmas in particular.Bound within this limitation is the use of a suburban

sample, which means that all brands, products and services

are freely available. A related limitation arose from sampling

and respondent issues that necessitated the designation of

popular brand names as a group of brands rather than the

use of specific brands. Since Christmas is a rite of passage

toward adulthood where children no longer believe in Santa

(Clark, 1995), various topics of research could address the

possibility of a progression through a series of specific brand

names or gift categories as a child grows older. Some

brands, such as Baby Alive, Barbie, Tonka, Lego or Thomas,

may now be traditional gifts at Christmas and this topic of

involvement in specific or traditional brands is also a valid

area of future research. The present study was limited to the

topic of involvement and gift giving rather than purchase

issues of affordability and price concepts which are worthy

topics for future research related to gift giving and to

involvement.

One area of interest could be the continued theory

development and exploration of the relationship between

involvement in gift giving and involvement in giving brands as

gifts. This paper reiterates the call of Sherry (1983) toinvestigate the antecedents to involvement in giving gifts that

relate to feelings, values and motives. Closely aligned with this

research direction is research into the antecedents of givingbrands as gifts and would encompass risk aversion and

hedonic or symbolic evaluations of brands as gifts. Similarly,

antecedents of involvement in gift giving would encompassfeelings, evaluations and attitudes.

Another avenue open to future research is the issue of the

relevance of Santa Claus within a gift-giving context. Society’schanging values may have issues with the Santa Claus myth

that could impact on promotional activities or limit the

willingness to purchase a range of items because one viewconsiders ritual gift giving to be materialistic and over-

indulgent (Hirschman and LaBarbera, 1989; Murray, 1997).

Consequently, it may be important not to be prolific in giftgiving or to give requested brands.

Parents give gifts as a continuous, complementary social

responsibility to affirm the parent-child relationship. Sincetoys are now sold all year round, the level of involvement in

giving outside traditional occasions is worthy of further

research because many of these purchases may reflect theimportance and relevance of continuous relationship building

through gift giving. Further research direction relates to the

outcomes of involvement. Since gift giving involvement

appears to be feelings and values based, further researchcould identify outcomes, which could include behaviours,

attitudes, strategies and motives. Giving brands as gifts

concerns issues of choice and future research would bedirected to involvement outcomes of information search for

special gift giving occasions.The intent of this paper is to make a contribution to both

the gift giving and involvement literature. The difference in

beliefs about gift giving and giving brands as gifts is a

highlight of this research and this study is a step towardbuilding theory and understanding the role of involvement in

gift giving to children at Christmas.

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About the author

Peter Clarke is a Lecturer at Griffith University in the

Department of Marketing. He has a Bachelor of Commerce

majoring in Marketing and Human Resource Management

with 1st Class Honours in Marketing and a PhD focusing on

Christmas and consumer behaviour. Peter Clarke has

published in the Journal of Consumer Behavior on children’s

request behaviour and delivered papers on consumer

behaviour at national and international conferences. Peter

Clarke can be contacted at: [email protected]

Executive summary and implications formanagers and executives

This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives

a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a

particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in

toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the

research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the

material present.

Different studies have concluded that parents respond to their

children’s needs by offering unconditional warmth, affection,

attachment and bonding. In western cultures, Christmas

provides a unique opportunity to reinforce these values and

parents typically do so by presenting their children with gifts.

This supports the claim that consumption on such occasions

satisfies not only basic needs, but also higher level ones that

can be of a cultural, social or personal nature. The giving of

specific gifts can therefore convey certain meanings.

Involvement

The importance of involvement has often been noted, and it

has been proved in various contexts that involvement levels

invariably influence information search and decision-making.

Some theories have also argued that the act of gift giving itself

invokes different levels of involvement. Clarke, however,

claims that parents’ involvement in giving gifts and giving gifts

at Christmas is an under-researched area.Many definitions of involvement have been offered,

including “feelings of interest and enthusiasm”, “perceived

relevance of the object in question” and a measure of the

“extent of interest and concern”. Involvement is also said to

indicate the strength of link between a consumer and the

product in question. There is general agreement, though, that

consumers take more interest in choosing a product when

they perceive the prospect of it satisfying higher level needs. In

a gift-giving context, these needs revolve around creating,

sustaining or strengthening close personal relationships.Involvement exists at both product and brand level. An

example of product involvement would be a parent choosing a

cycle without training wheels for their child. Such a choice is

recognition of a “coming of age” and thus represents a

significant landmark for both parent and child alike. Brand

decision involvement would relate to the brand of bicycle

selected.Studies have indicated that both products and brands

contain, among other things, pleasure value and risk value.

Familiarity with a specific brand name may reassure and

reduce consumer perceptions of the risk levels involved. It has

also been noted that brands can have symbolic value for both

giver and receiver of the gift. Because people attach such

benefits to certain brand names, giving brands as gifts may be

regarded as involving.To measure the concept of involvement, the author carried

out a study of parents with one or more children between

three and eight years old. A self-administered survey was

distributed to schools and kindergartens and the author

received 450 usable responses. The aim was to analyse how

involvement influenced how parents choose gifts for their

children at Christmas. The survey was unique in that the

focus was on the intangible act of gift giving itself, whereas


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previous research into involvement had largely concentratedon tangible products.

Product or brand?

The survey revealed no significant relationship betweeninvolvement in giving gifts and involvement in giving brandsas gifts. Clarke interprets this as showing that parents believeit is important to present gifts to their children but notimportant to give brands as gifts. This would support previousresearch concluding that product involvement is centred onvalues and brand involvement from perceived brandattributes.

That a much lower mean was recorded in relation to givingbrand names as gifts suggests that parents choose productcategory first and foremost. Clarke notes that traditionalimages of Christmas gifts such as teddy bears, dolls, trainsand soldiers among other things still prevail and influenceparental choice.

During the Christmas festival, children often request giftsand parents give those they deem most appropriate. Previousresearch has indicated that parents often choose an alternativegift to the one requested and this was also evident here. Thisso-called “substitution tactic” may be likelier when childrenrequest a brand as a gift. Evidence suggests that brand namesinfluence adult consumption but Clarke’s findings support theview that it is not the case when parents choose gifts for theirchildren. This runs counter to previous research claiming thatpurchase choice is made at brand level. However, there is alsoa theory that parents refuse to give popular brands as giftspartly as a protest against television advertising, which theybelieve has a negative influence on their children. Clarke

points out that parents do give brands as gifts but do notregard it as a priority to do so.

Society change and its implications

It was also found that parents generally have a “moderatelevel” of involvement in giving gifts to their children atChristmas. While this offers evidence that Christmas is animportant occasion for this ritual, Clarke suggests it alsoreflects the changes society has undergone in recent decades.He points out that, up to the 1970s, the toy industry captured80 per cent of its annual sales in the six-week period leadingup to Christmas. Now, partly due to the emergence of large-scale specialist toy retailers and year round marketing, it iscommon for parents to give their children gifts as rewards orincentives anytime during the year.

The author suggests that future research could exploreinvolvement levels in specific or traditional brands andexplore the notion that children progress through differentproduct categories or brand names as they get older. Inaddition, marketers may also care to examine value changes insociety that can affect attitudes to Christmas. Givingexpensive or large volumes of gifts may be regarded asmaterialistic or over indulgent and Clarke warns that it maybe unwise to encourage such behaviour through advertising.Now that gift giving is common practice throughout the year,investigation into involvement levels at other times couldprovide further insight, as could study of other variables suchas price and affordability.

(A precis of the article “Christmas gift giving involvement”.Supplied by Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)


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