Morgan K. Ward

It’s Not Me, It’s You: How Gift Giving Creates Giver Identity Threat as a Function of Social Closeness

Prior research has established that consumers are motivated to purchase identity-consistent products. We extend consumer identity research into an important consumer context, gift giving, in which individuals may make product choices that run counter to their own identities in order to fulfill the desires of the intended recipient. We find that purchasing an identity-contrary gift for a close (vs. distant) friend who is an integral part of the self can itself cause an identity threat to the giver. Four experiments in a gift registry context show that after making an identity-contrary gift choice for a close (vs. distant) friend, givers subsequently engage in behaviors that reestablish their identity such as indicating greater identity affiliation with the threatened identity and greater likelihood to purchase identity-expressive products. This research highlights the opposing forces that product purchase may exert on consumer identity as both a potential threat and means of self-verification.

Ask and You Shall (Not) Receive: Close Friends Prioritize Relational Signaling over Recipient Preferences in Their Gift Choices

Gift givers balance their goal to please recipients with gifts that match recipient preferences against their own goal to signal relational closeness with gifts that demonstrate their knowledge of the recipient. Five studies in a gift registry context show that when close (vs. distant) givers receive attribution for the gifts they choose, they are more likely to diverge from the registry to choose items that signal their close relationships. The authors find that close givers’ divergence from the registry is not the result of their altruistic search for a “better” gift but is a strategic effort to express relational signals: it occurs only when givers will receive attribution for their choice. They show that close givers reconcile their goal conflict by engaging in motivated reasoning, which results in their perceptual distortion of the gift options in favor of relational-signaling gifts. Ironically, distant givers are more likely to choose gifts from the registry, resulting in the selection of items that better match recipient preferences.

The Benefit of Becoming Friends: Complaining After Service Failures Leads Customers with Strong Ties to Increase Loyalty

Service firms spend considerable resources soliciting complaints to initiate recovery efforts and improve their offerings. However, managers may be overlooking the fact that complaints serve an equally important role in engendering loyalty. The authors demonstrate that the strength of social ties between customers and service providers influences the degree to which complaining drives loyalty. Paradoxically, while strongly tied customers fear that complaining threatens their ties with the provider, when they are encouraged to complain, their loyalty increases because offering feedback serves as an effective way to preserve social ties. Conversely, for weakly tied customers, complaining has no effect on loyalty. Furthermore, complaints are more effective in driving loyalty for strongly tied customers when the feedback is directed toward the provider who failed, rather than to an entity external to the failure. Finally, when providers signal an authentic openness to feedback, strongly tied customers are more loyal after complaining, whereas authenticity does little to engender loyalty for weakly tied customers who complain. The value of complaints in driving loyalty is promising both for customers who perceive a strong tie to a particular provider within the firm and, more generally, in service industries wherein strong ties naturally occur.