When Gifts Are Not Given in Fun
Admit it. You love your husband but that iron he gave you for your birthday. . .not so much. What happens when good people get bad gifts ? According to newswise.com, sometimes a little malice might be involved. It reports that receiving is complicated when gifts are not meant to please. A typical U.S. consumer is expected to buy 14 gifts this holiday season, and new marketing research describes how and why many of these gifts will cause dissatisfaction rather than joy. In new research findings, NYIT School of Management associate professor Deborah Y. Cohn asserts that people who give bad gifts often do so intentionally. Prior gift-giving research has assumed that bad gifts result from mistakes, but Cohn’s study, using in-depth interviews as well as data available via online message boards, describes five categories of intentional bad gift-giving: gifts that threaten the recipient’s self-concept, such as: -- giving a pregnancy test to your childless daughter-in-law