The Curious Marketer. Are books better gifts than chocolates?

The Puja and Diwali festive season is just ahead. This is the time of the year when many of us will think about gifting. We love receiving and giving gifts, because they are symbols of affection and respect. Gifts also make us very happy.

In India, it is conventional to gift mithais or chocolates during this season. However, a recent conversation made me think differently about gifting. I met a person a few days ago, and he told me that he always chooses to give books as gifts.

I asked him why. “Books are powerful gifts”, he said, “because a single idea in a book can transform a person’s life. Also, books can become spontaneous conversation starters with business associates and customers.”

This led to an interesting question in my mind. Are books better festive gifts than chocolates?

The books advantage

There are many reasons why books are the better gift.

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First, when you are gifting a book, you are gifting so many useful or inspiring ideas that it contains.

Second, books can last forever, whereas a gift of sweets is very temporary.

Third, books are far healthier than mithais, which are generally loaded with sugar.

Fourth, books can be a great personalized gift, particularly if you know what types of books the receiver likes to read. Such personalization shows the receiver that you really care about them.

Fifth, books encourage thoughtful conversations about the topics that they contain. Such discussions in turn help strengthen relationships.

Sixth, because books are an unconventional festive gift, they are likely to stand out in a sea of sugary sameness.

The rationale for chocolates

Sweets have their own strong festive gifting logic as well.

First, there is an implicit expectation that a gift during the Dusshera and Diwali period will contain something sweet. Will be a gift without sweets be considered incomplete?

Second, not everyone reads books, but most people eat sweets, atleast occasionally. Some health conscious people do avoid sweets completely these days, but that segment is still in a small minority.

Third, despite all the talk about the adverse health impact of excessive sugar consumption, so many of us love our chocolates and sweets. They are delectable, they satisfy our cravings, and therefore they are very popular.

Fourth, if you really wish to gift healthy in this space, you could go the extra distance by choosing options such as low-sugar chocolates or sugar-free mithais made of dry fruits, which are now available in most premium outlets, though somewhat pricey.

Different strokes for different folks

As you can see from this brief analysis, both books and chocolates as gifts have their own pros and cons, and they serve very different consumer needs. So how do you eventually decide?

This is where a fundamental aspect of good marketing and gifting comes in – the art of segmentation. You need to understand which segment the person to whom you are planning to give a gift belongs to. Is she or he an avid reader, a person constantly seeking self-improvement, a healthy guy, a diabetic patient, or a health obsessed middle-aged person? An ideal gift should be aligned with the receiver’s top priorities and needs.

There is little point in gifting a book to someone who does not read at all, or, conversely, gifting chocolates to a diabetic person who is trying to stay away from sweets completely. While we have focused here only on books and chocolates, similar pros, cons and segments can also be identified for other product categories.

Sometimes, you may not know the receiver of your gift well enough. In such cases, it may be prudent to stick to safe gifting choices which are universally acceptable – eg. dry fruits, or a broad based gift card.

You may also wish to layer your understanding of the receiver’s needs with your own gifting philosophy. For instance, some people like gifting products made by not-for-profit social organisations, to express support for specific causes.

Marketers can use many of these insights in their gifting campaigns. They need to highlight the specific advantages offered by their brands, as well as the target segments which would most appreciate their products. Such approaches would be far more effective than the generic marketing campaigns which we tend to see during most festive seasons. Happy gifting !

(Harish Bhat is an avid marketer and bestselling author. He was previously the Brand Custodian at Tata Sons. These are his personal views.)