The Effect Of Social Distance On Experiential Gift Choice

Under the experience economy,consumers have increasing demand for gifts and pay more attention to the experiential function of gifts.This is both an opportunity and a challenge for gift marketing.Therefore,the timely and accurate understanding of when and why consumers choose experiential gifts is a key factor to get a head start in the gift market.By combing relevant literature in the field of gift-giving behavior,we found that previous studies focused on the purpose,motivation of gift-giving,differences in gift-giving and receiving,and intimate relationship gift-giving,while there were few studies on experiential gift choice.Existing studies have found that social distance can affect consumers’ choice of experiential gifts,but there are still the following deficiencies:(1)Social distance has different influence directions on experiential gift choice;(2)The research on the mechanism of experience-based gift choice is only at the cognitive level,and it is not clear whether cognition and emotion play a role in consumption decision.(3)Few studies have explored the role of interpersonal orientation in decision-making as a trait;(4)Most of the research methods used are scenario simulation,which needs to be enriched.Based on the lack of existing studies,this study intends to explore the role of social distance in experiential gift choice and clarify the influence direction of social distance on experiential gift choice.The influence mechanism of social distance on experience-oriented gift choice was improved based on two factors: the knowledge of the recipient’s preference and the state anxiety in decision making.At the same time,explore the moderating effect of interpersonal relationship orientation.In the first study,74 effective subjects were recruited by the behavioral experiment method.E-prime was used to present gift options,so as to explore the influence of social distance on the choice of gift types.SPSS23.0 software was used to analyze the data,and the results showed that:(1)Social distance was significantly correlated with gift type choice;The closer the social distance,the more likely consumers are to choose experiential gifts.In the second study,211 effective participants were recruited by questionnaire to explore the mechanism of social distance’s influence on experience-oriented gift choice.SPSS23.0 software was used to analyze the data,and the results showed that:(1)Social distance had a significant positive predictive effect on preference knowledge;(2)Preference knowledge has a significant negative predictive effect on state anxiety;(3)State anxiety has a significant negative predictive effect on experience-based gift choice;(4)Preferred knowledge and state anxiety had significant chain mediating effect between social distance and experience-based gift choice.In study 3,a total of 230 effective subjects were recruited by questionnaire method to explore the boundary conditions of social distance affecting experience-oriented gift choice.SPSS23.0 software was used to analyze the data.The results showed that:(1)Interpersonal orientation had no significant moderating effect on the relationship between social distance and preference knowledge;(2)Interpersonal orientation has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between preferred knowledge and state anxiety;(3)The more interpersonal relationship orientation tends to be shared orientation,the stronger the influence of preferred knowledge on state anxiety;The influence of preference knowledge on state anxiety disappeared with the greater the preference for transaction orientation.