Looking a gift horse in the mouth

Priya’s five-year-old son got an embroidery kit, Mamatha’s niece got a used gift card, four-year-old Roshni got a pair of glass katoris and Dershana got a set of sketch pens that didn’t write. But amidst the recycling and the palming off, there are nice ones too – the nicest ones being the most thoughtful ones that did not have much to do with money. Such as the spontaneous gift of a pen that a child gave Sandhya at the end of a children’s reading workshop, or the box of handkerchiefs that Sunita got from a friend on an ordinary day.

Those were the responses to a casual poll on gifting, but here’s what a more formal survey, called Giftology, conducted recently by Titan Company found:

One in four 18-24 year-olds received more gifts than they gave this festive period. The biggest net givers (63 per cent) are aged 55 and above.

Women are slightly more astute than men in gifting profit and loss terms. Thirty-one per cent of women (and 23 per cent men) get as much as they give. Sixty per cent of men believed they gave more than what they received compared to 50 per cent of women.

More men (64 per cent) than women (51 per cent) say their partners buy the best gifts.

Rajan Amba, Titan’s Global Marketing & Product Head, says the Giftology survey is an insightful look at gifting trends this festive season. However, he is quick to qualify that it is “not quantitative” but a “light-hearted perspective” on what our consumers think about gifting. “In reality, few of us will analyse our spending and receiving patterns with such cold-hearted precision,” he adds. Titan conducted this study online in October among 3,400 customers in the major metros and some other cities who are members of Encircle, its customer loyalty programme and the responses were subjective and qualitative assessments, he says.

More people feel they have given more than they have received.

Bigger celebrations mark today’s festivals more than ever, and the gifts have got glitzier, the study observes, with husbands gifting their wives diamonds and expensive watches. Both sexes find their spouses/partners are the hardest set of people to buy gifts for. Spouses/partners give the best gifts. Friends, and then bosses, give the worst. Only those aged 45-55 considered their friends and fathers-in-law to be good gifters.

The nature of gifts have changed as well. Gizmos are slowly replacing gold, chocolates and ‘healthy’ options are alternatives to traditional sweets and dry fruit. Marketers of all stripes are getting onto the bandwagon launching festive ranges. This Diwali, for instance, hair care brand Dove launched a festive range of aromatic hair oils, Starbucks launched a coffee pack, Carzonrent marketed its self-drive service with a Mahindra Reva e2o as an environment-friendly travel option for shoppers, Real launched fruit juice packs, Havells launched an air fryer positioning it as both a gift and as an aid to healthy eating, Bosch Power Tools launched a do-it-yourself engraver for gifts, and BackJoy launched a range of colourful cushions for pain relief. Now, did someone think of those pricey onions as a festive gift?