هدایای گردشگری : بینش هایی به رفتار مصرف کننده

Using empirical evidence from real-life accounts of the giving, receiving and consuming of tourism and leisure products as gifts, this paper examines the phenomenon of experience gift giving behavior. Although generic gift giving has an extensive literature expanding from the 1950s, there is a gap between consumer activity in experience gift consumption and academic understanding. The study findings show the constituent parts and processes of decision-making, gift exchange, and post-exchange, consumption and post-consumption. These concepts, whether new (for example, patterns of participation in consumption), adapted (for example, wrapping strategies) or absorbed (for example, impression management) from the gift giving literature, are drawn together as a Model of Experience Gift Giving Behavior.

There is a discrepancy between the practice of giving, receiving and consuming gifts that are tourism and leisure experiences and an understanding of this phenomenon as evidenced in academic attention. There is historical precedence for experience gifts; travel has been exchanged as a gift, often by the elite, for many centuries. In today’s developed countries, anecdotal, trade and magazine evidence (Anonymous, 2005, Consumers Association, 2002 and Knight, 2003) highlights the intangible experience as ensconced in the gift giving repertoire of many individuals. Indeed, there is even an ‘experience industry’ of specialist companies (United Kingdom examples include Virgin Experience Days, Activity Superstore, and Experience World) that package experiences from abseiling to zoo-keeping specifically for the gift buying market. In North America, tourism and leisure products a.k.a. the experience are a “hot gift category” for the future (Anonymous 2005:92). In reality, the designated ‘experience industry’ as elucidated above (see Mintel 2001) forms only the tip of the experience gift iceberg. The vast array of tourism, hospitality and leisure providers sell products that are used by purchasers as gifts to be consumed by a third party. However, only the more enlightened of these providers are proactive in the gift giving marketplace. Curiously, this consumer activity has not been reflected in academic output; doubly surprising given the maturity of gift giving literature per se. Much of the knowledge of gift giving derives from the social sciences accumulated over half-a-century (e.g. Mauss 1954), yet amongst the many sub-topics (e.g. gender, cultural context, self-gifting, dark side of giving etcetera) the intangible gift has not been singled out for observation. By default, the generic understanding of gift giving behavior is rooted in the study of physical goods, and hence the discrepancy between such consumer behavior in society and its associated academic discourse. To date, the notion of gifts and gift giving in tourism has been confined to vacation souvenirs as gifts for others (see, for example, Kim and Littrell 2001), rather than to the experience itself as a gift from one party to another to express a personal relationship. The purpose of this paper is to begin to close this gap between behavioral practice and academic understanding of tourism and leisure when conferred gift status through use of empirical evidence drawn from real-life accounts of the giving, receiving and consumption of experience gifts. It only considers experience gifts used within personal relationships; institutional or company-based gifts of tourism and leisure products are outside the scope of this study. Alongside the assessment of the constituent parts and processes, a model is proposed that expresses the blend of absorbed, adapted and new concepts to best advance the understanding of the phenomenon of experience gift giving behavior.

This research is believed to be the first focused study of the consumer behavior associated with tourism and leisure products that are assigned gift status. It sought to explore how the concepts and processes evident in selecting, exchanging and consuming experience gifts might vary in either fact or emphasis from the generic knowledge of gift giving behavior embedded in the social science literature, and whether these findings could coalesce as a model to better understand experience gift giving behavior. Empirical evidence was derived from the informant accounts of 189 real cases of experience gift giving drawn from depth interviews and a written instrument; the dataset had a United Kingdom orientation and emphasized the closeness of relationships together with the high monetary value of experience gifts. The experience gift itself offers much scope and flexibility to the imagination of the donor, for, although they can be purchased as convenience packages from the experience industry, they may also be handcrafted by the donor using a mix of services straight from the suppliers. Thus the individuality of a particular gift and its fit to the foibles of the intended recipient make it unique—enhanced of course by the inherent variability in experiences or services. The proposed Model of Experience Gift Giving Behavior is based around the three broad stages of the decision-making process, the exchange, and post-exchange/consumption/post-consumption, and successfully combines the generic gift giving concepts, the adaptations, and the new concepts all emerging from the empirical evidence on experience gifts. The model allows for immediate and delayed consumption, for one-off and series experiences, and for commercially formulated, modified and handcrafted experiences; in this, it encompasses a range of possible experience gift choices. As suggested in the paper, cross-cultural studies of experience gift giving behavior that explored the transferability of both the constructs and the Model of Experience Gift Giving Behavior would contribute to the further understanding of this phenomenon. Focused research on the three types of experience gifts—purchased, modified and created—would bring additional detail to the discussion. Other avenues for future research questions include those focusing on individual gift giving concepts—for example, donor motivation, recipient sacrifice, exchange rituals and artifacts—as expressed in experience gift giving behavior, and the specific research streams on gift giving sub-topics as previously examined in generic gift giving research—for example, gender, self-gifting, or the dark side of giving. Tangentially, experience gift giving offers insights to the shared consumption of tourism and leisure with significant others, and to the meaning of quality time in a time pressured society—rich hunting grounds for social science. Furthermore, the research poses questions as to the role of the experience gift in the formation, development, and maintenance of personal relationships in the twenty-first century. Moving away from personal relationships, an examination of the use of experience gifts in a corporate context— for example, for employee and intermediary motivation or employee retirement—might also have research appeal. Through offering insights and a model to conceptualize an important phenomenon concerning tourism and leisure in today’s wealthy Western societies, this paper marks experience gifts as worthy of academic recognition and greater understanding, opening the way for debate and discussion on this hitherto unexposed topic.