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The purpose of this paper is to provide information on handling gifts‐in‐kind in Croatian public and academic libraries. It also recommends what should be done to improve practice with gifts for collections.

The paper is based on the author's research conducted using an anonymous online questionnaire that was sent to Croatian public libraries (n=139) and academic libraries (n=73) in May 2011. After a two‐week period, a total of 84 responses was received (40 public libraries and 44 academic libraries). In statistical analysis, some variables are tested by χ²‐test to show whether differences between public and academic libraries are statistically significant.

The majority of Croatian libraries do not have gift policy statements. Gifts do have a significant part in collection building, especially in Croatian academic libraries, but are not always handled in the right way (i.e. according to IFLA's guidelines). This paper shows the quantity of gifts in the libraries, librarians' reasons for not accepting some gifts, librarians' methods in dealing with gifts, and their way of communicating with donors or potential donors.

This paper gives results of the first complete study of gift policies in Croatian public and academic libraries. In conclusion, a need for a written gift policy in Croatian libraries is emphasized and some recommendations are given.

Businesses are spending billions of dollars on recognition rewards with the intent of boosting employee engagement, job satisfaction, and ultimately, their bottom line. However, employee engagement is at an all-time low. The purpose of this study was designed to take a step back to understand if there are demographic differences that influence personal preferences for tangible gifts as their preferred language of appreciation and of those who prefer to receive gifts, what types of gifts are most valued.

This study compared the demographics of those who selected tangible gifts as their primary (N  =  8,811), secondary (N = 14,827) or least valued (N  = 108,586) language of appreciation (motivating by appreciation inventory, White, 2011). From those with tangible gifts as their primary language of appreciation, 500 were randomly selected to code their open-ended suggestions for a preferred gift.

There are no important factors across the demographics of gender, age or work setting that influence whether individuals are more or less likely to choose tangible gifts as their primary, secondary or least valued language of appreciation. Respondents identified gift cards, additional paid time off and gifts related to desired personal experiences as their top gift choices.

When giving gifts to colleagues, discovering individuals’ personal preferences (favorite store, restaurant, ticketed event, food, drink and lunch option) is more likely to result in a gift that “hits the mark” in showing appreciation to the recipient.

The gift-giving literature has documented several cases in which givers and recipients do not see eye-to-eye in gift-giving decisions. To help integrate this considerable segment of the gifting literature, this paper aims to develop a social norms-based framework for understanding and predicting giver-recipient asymmetries in gift selection.

Five experimental studies test the hypotheses. Participants in these studies evaluate gifts used in previous research, choose between gifts as either gift-givers or gift-recipients, and/or indicate their level of discomfort with choosing different kinds of gifts. The gifts vary in ways that allow the authors to test the social norms-based framework.

Gift-giving asymmetries tend to occur when one of the gifts under consideration is less descriptively, but not less injunctively, normative than the other. This theme holds for both asymmetries recorded in the gift-giving literature and novel ones. Indeed, the authors document new asymmetries in cases where the framework would expect asymmetries to occur and, providing critical support for the framework, the absence of asymmetries in cases where the framework would not expect asymmetries to emerge. Moreover, the authors explain these asymmetries, and lack thereof, using a mechanism that is novel to the literature on gift-giving mismatches: feelings of discomfort.

This research has multiple theoretical implications for the literatures studying gift-giving and social norms. A limitation of this work is that it left some (secondary) predictions of its model untested. Future research could test some of these predictions.

Billions of dollars are spent on gifts each year, making gift-giving a research topic of great practical importance. In addition, the research offers suggestions to consumers giving gifts, consumers receiving gifts, as well as marketers.

The research is original in that it creates a novel framework that predicts both the presence and absence of gift-giving asymmetries, introduces a psychological mechanism to the literature on giver-recipient gift choice asymmetries, and unifies many of the mismatches previously documented in this literature.

From a relational perspective, this research aims to answer the following question: How can human resource management (HRM) and innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) be articulated at different levels through gift/counter–gift relationships?

The authors' longitudinal and exploratory study was conducted in an innovative SME that constitutes an “emblematic” case. The data were gathered from diverse sources: 2 life stories, 21 semi-structured interviews, observations and documentary analyses.

The results provide a dynamic view of the relationship between HRM and innovation through multi-level analysis. The authors consequently propose a three-step process: freeing up, mobilizing and rethinking gifts.

This article examines how to articulate HRM and innovation in SMEs through gift/counter-gift theory. This relationship is analyzed from a relational and multi-level perspective.

This paper aims to examine whether consumers’ appreciation of promotional gifts exceeds firms’ cost of providing these gifts. The paper also compares characteristics of appreciated and unappreciated gifts.

The authors surveyed 1,289 college students in five European countries. The authors use willingness to accept cash (WTA) for an item to assess consumers’ appreciation of promotional gifts. They then compare WTA to firms’ estimated cost of providing the gifts.

On average, consumers’ appreciation of promotional gifts is 2.4 times the estimated cost of these gifts to sellers. Appreciated gifts tend to be less costly, tend to accompany more expensive purchased items and are more likely to complement these items. The results also reveal that more expensive items come with more costly gifts, although the gifts’ cost increases less than proportionally with the associated items’ price. The gift items are appreciated by men more than women.

This study enriches the literature on promotional gifting by introducing a simple measurement that can help firms decide whether to use gifts or discounts to promote their products.

Sacrifice, integral to gift giving, remains unexplored and undertheorized in marketing. This paper aims to address this shortfall by analyzing the dynamics of sacrifice and theorizing how it serves as an engine of the gift chimney.

The ethnographic investigation of public ceremonial gift giving in sectarian Northern Ireland describes and interprets the complex nature of the gift.

The authors show that sacrifice is a plausible mechanism of the gift chimney and that the co-occurrence of monadic, dyadic and systemic giving in the same ritual acts as an accelerant.

The authors analyze how public ceremonial gift giving induces sectarian communities to risk convocation, enabling them to exorcize trauma sustained at one another’s hands and to build a platform for future cross-community cohesion in a context of ineffective institutional efforts.

Sacrifice propels circulation of the gift, creating a social bond between antagonists whose ethos of mutuality depends upon ritualized reciprocal recognition of entangled loss.

This study aims to add to the gift giving literature by examining how the wealth of a recipient impacts giver spending. The authors tested the hypotheses that givers spend more on wealthy (vs unwealthy) recipients, partially because givers anticipate a greater difference in gift-liking across expensive and cheap gifts when the recipient is wealthy, and partially because givers are more motivated to signal that they are of high financial status when the recipient is wealthy. The authors also tested whether givers’ tendency to spend more on wealthy (vs unwealthy) recipients attenuates when the recipient is someone with whom the giver has a negative (vs positive) relationship.

Eight experimental studies tested the hypotheses. These studies had participants act as givers, consider giving a gift to either a wealthy or unwealthy recipient and indicate how much money they would spend on the gift. Some studies included additional measures to test potential mediators, while another included an additional manipulation to test a potential boundary condition.

Gift givers spend more on gifts for wealthy (vs unwealthy) recipients, for two main reasons. On the one hand, givers are influenced by an other-oriented motive – they wish for their gift to be well-liked by the recipient and anticipate a greater difference in recipient gift-liking across expensive and cheap gifts when the recipient is wealthy. On the other hand, givers are influenced by a self-oriented motive – they wish to signal to the recipient that they are of high financial status, but this desire is stronger when the recipient is wealthy. Critically, givers are relatively unlikely to spend more on wealthy (vs unwealthy) recipients when they have a negative (vs positive) relationship with the recipient.

The authors studied how the wealth of the gift recipient influences givers’ gift expenditure, but they did not examine the recipient’s perspective. Future research could address this by exploring whether recipients’ gift preferences vary based on their wealth.

Gift purchases account for a significant portion of worldwide consumer spending, making gift giving an important topic for consumers and marketers alike. The present research sheds light on a factor that has a notable impact on how much consumers spend on a gift when faced with a gift giving decision.

This manuscript contributes to the gift giving literature by exploring an important aspect that influences consumer gift expenditure (the wealth of the recipient), demonstrating a novel gift giving phenomenon [that givers spend more when giving to relatively wealthy (vs unwealthy) recipients], and shedding new light on the psychology of consumers in gift giving contexts (namely, how givers’ perceptions of recipient gift-liking, their desire to send signals of high financial status and their relationship with the recipient can influence their gifting decisions).

This paper aims to examine the differential effects of the type of gift (material vs experiential) offered on Snapchat and Instagram (Study 1) and how the impacts of gift type and message type (informational vs emotional) vary by the two different image-sharing social media platform in a business-to-consumer (B2C) gift-giving context (Study 2).

Study 1 used a two (social media: Snapchat vs Instagram) by two (gift type: material vs experiential) between-subject factorial design, whereas Study 2 used a two (social media: Snapchat vs Instagram) by two (gift type: material vs experiential) by two (message type: informational vs emotional) between-subject factorial design. A series of analyses of covariance was conducted to test the suggested hypotheses.

Study 1 demonstrated that the promotion of material gifts was more effective on Snapchat than on Instagram, while the promotion of experiential gifts was more effective on Instagram than on Snapchat. Study 2 showed that the impacts of gift type and message type varied by social media platform. The promotion of an experiential gift with an emotional ad appeal was found to be more effective on Instagram than on Snapchat, while the promotion of a material gift using an informational ad appeal was found to be more effective on Snapchat than on Instagram.

This research used a college student sample for the experiments. However, to extend the generalizability of the results, it is recommended that future experiments be conducted with nonstudent samples. Also, the current research manipulated the two different social media conditions, Snapchat vs Instagram, by enforcing participants to use their social media and then provided experimental stimuli in a different screen from their social media account. If the stimuli were distributed through participants’ real social media account, the external validity of this research could be enhanced. Finally, future research should apply this framework to other countries with different social media platforms to confirm the generalizability of the study’s findings.

This research can thus contribute to the development of new guidelines for planning social media marketing in the business gift-giving context. By leveraging findings that the fit effect of gift types and advertising appeals differs based on social media platform, practitioners can create a more effective social media plan for their advertising campaigns. Given that copywriting and media plans are among the most important and difficult work in the business of advertising, this study’s findings would assist advertising practitioners in planning and executing the most effective advertising campaigns.

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for the development of effective brand promotion strategies for B2C gift-giving via social media.

This research examines cultural differences between Thais and Americans in recipients' attitudes and behaviors throughout all three stages of Sherry's (1983) gift-giving model and the moderating effect of relationship closeness on the gift-giving process.

Three experiments tested recipients' attitudes and behaviors across cultures in each gift-giving stage. Study 1 explored the gestation stage (gift search and purchase). Study 2 tested recipients in the prestation stage (actual exchange), and Study 3 examined the reformulation stage (gift disposition and realignment of the relationship).

Results show that relationship closeness between the giver and the recipient plays a role among interdependent self-construals. Thais (interdependent self-construals) are more likely to give a hint or make a request for a gift to close friends than distant friends and are also more likely to accept, keep and use gifts from close friends than from distant friends. Moreover, for interdependent self-construals, a gift from a close friend improved the relationship more than a gift from a distant friend. In contrast, Americans (independent self-construals) present no differences between close and distant friends.

This research provides a comprehensive picture of the recipient's perspective in cross-cultural gift-giving and expands the notion of relationship closeness as a moderator.

This study aims to investigate the factors that affect an audience's purchase decisions on a new type of social media, namely live video streaming platforms.

This study is based on data from an online survey providing 488 valid responses. These responses are used to test the research model by employing partial least squares (PLS) modeling.

Three antecedents (consumer competitive arousal, gift design aesthetics and broadcaster's image) influence the audience's purchase decisions (impulse buying and continuous buying intention). Chinese impression management (mianzi) acts as a moderator. Self-mianzi, mutual mianzi and other mianzi (i.e. three subtypes of mianzi) moderate the effects of consumer competitive arousal, gift design aesthetics and broadcaster's image on impulse buying.

The findings encourage practitioners developing marketing strategies for live video streaming platforms in the Chinese cultural context to consider peer influence, gift appearance, broadcaster's image and mianzi.

Drawing on the community gift-giving model and face-negotiation theory, this study provides an integrated research model to investigate a new type of social media (live video streaming). It offers insight into virtual gifting behaviors by confirming the effects of three antecedents on the audience's purchase decisions, with mianzi acting as a moderator.