The giving of gifts is an important part of the customer / staff motivational tool kit for business, especially at this time of year. But deciding on a gift that will be appreciated and remembered is difficult achieve. Some recent research may help you make a good decision.
Ask any parent and they’ll tell you that their children often enjoy the experience of opening presents far longer than they enjoy the using gift itself and according to research published in PSYBLOG, which looked at whether people get more pleasure and happier memories from ‘life experiences’ or ‘material things’ it seems our employees and staff may be no different.
When thousands of Americans were asked this question, 57% said experiences make them happier and 34% said things make them happier (Carter & Gilovich, 2010). For once the majority is right.
When you’re considering what gifts to purchase this year, the research suggest you should consider the following:
- Experiences improve with time because they tend to take on new meanings in our minds, but things just tend to get old.
- People mentally revisit their experiences more than things they’ve bought (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003). So experiences keep providing pleasure long after the event itself.
- Experiences resist unfavourable comparisons because each is unique. Things, though, are easy to compare unfavourably because they’re similar to other things.
- Also, because experiences tend to be unique, we adapt more slowly to them and adaptation or habituation is the enemy of happiness (Nicolao et al., 2009).
- Experiences tend to be social and social events (generally) make us happy. Things are often not that social.
The article points out that the boundaries between ‘experiences’ and ‘things’ are not always clear cut. Going back to our children’s gifts, a bike is a thing, but the experiences they have whilst riding the bike may last far longer, and give more pleasure, than the bike itself. In short, the more experiential a gift is, the happier it’s likely to make us.
So if you want happy customers and employees, consider spending your cash on something more experiential than material. Whilst the recipient might not be able to hold the result in their hand, it seems it will live longer in their minds.
You can read more about this research on PSYBLOG here:
In the meantime, if you’d like to talk about how we can help you develop effective staff retention, engagement and reward programs contact us here.
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