It's Not About You. It's About Me.
Okay, it’s official. Men and women don’t know what to get each other for holiday gifts (like, duh). And, in fact, they choose things for their Significant Others (“SO”) that they’d really like to receive for themselves (double duh). Results of one timely study really do give new meaning to the phrase: ”It’s not about you. It’s about me.”
Don’t believe me? Check out the oh-so-catchy titled “Why It Is So Hard To Predict Our Partner’s Product Preferences: The Effect of Target Familiarity on Prediction Accuracy,” published in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research by the egg-heady University of Chicago Press. (Note to my SO: a subscription to this publication is so NOT a good idea. Think People Mag or Star.)
So basically, what “Why It’s So Hard…” says is that people who live with and love each other are LESS likely to choose the perfect gift for each other than perfect strangers who use “gender specific” preferences (i.e. women generally lust for jewelry and perfume, men for cars and other women). Pretty pathetic, huh? Apparently, because we think we know our honeys so well, we don’t take in new info or clues about them. We think we know everything about them already. Plus, to add fuel to the flames, while women are more likely to both give out gift-giving clues and to listen to clues from their husbands/boyfriends/honeys, men are less likely to give clues to and listen to them from their wives/girlfriends/sweeties. (Got that? Even when it comes to gifts, women talk and men don’t listen. Men don’t talk even though we want them to. Amazing how we ever got together to require gift-giving in the first place.)
All of which validates my personal time-honored gift-giving technique. When it’s a biggy for moi, I pre-select. That way I know I will LOVE it. Romantic? Maybe not. But effective? Yes. And, of course, I ask Him for suggestions for things he’d like for his big occasions. His birthday was in November. I’m still waiting. (But now that I’ve read about the above study, I may just ask a random stranger in the mall to pick it out for me – as long as what he chooses isn’t named Peaches and comes with her own pole.)
Comments
You know, this really makes alot of sense. I buy gifts for friends (male/female) and its always the *perfect gift, but when it comes to hunny? Notta clue!! This year I just bought him exactly what he asked for, but packed it in larger boxes so he wouldn't guess. Hopefully he's using the same stratagy. You know what I got for Christmas last year? An office chair. (I swear, I'm not making that up!)
My husband was having a lot of trouble thinking of a gift for me this Christmas so he asked me to make a list. Five to ten things I would like, but never want to spend the money on. This way, he can pick something he knows I will like, but I won't know what he chooses so I will still be surprised.
This is my first year buying something for a boyfriend, and I'm stumped. I bought him a very lovely $20 gift that will suit his tastes just fine (alright, it's guitar music...), but then I found out that he was planning to buy me some Williams Sonoma cookware as "part of" my Christmas gift. Now, my thoughtful, I'm oh so proud of it, gift, seems tiny and inconsequential.
This boyfriend gift-giving thing is HARD!
I am so glad you have started this conversation on your site. My wife was onto the same concept as you and was inspired to launch Giftgirl, LLC last fall and this summer we launch www.giftgirl.com to address one key side to the problem you address: Guys are clueless when it comes to getting their girl a gift for whatever the occasion. I apologize for the plug, but we are just trying to get the ocnverstion going. A blog is in production as well to provide a forum. We are using a top notch firm to design a very cool site and the model is geared totally toward helping the guy looking for the gift (not the merchant trying to sell it or the advertiser trying to hawk it - we take no $$ from either) I appreciate any feedback from you or any of your readers! - Mike
mike@giftgirl.com
