I’m Worth It or I Need It? Self-Gift Giving and Consumers’ Self-Regulatory Mindset

Dania Mouakhar-Klouz, Alain d'Astous and Denis Darpy ()
Additional contact information
Dania Mouakhar-Klouz: PSY-NCA - Psychologie et Neurosciences de la Cognition et de l'affectivité - UNIROUEN - Université de Rouen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université, NIMEC - Normandie Innovation Marché Entreprise Consommation - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - ULH - Université Le Havre Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UNIROUEN - Université de Rouen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - IRIHS - Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire Homme et Société - UNIROUEN - Université de Rouen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université
Alain d'Astous: HEC MONTRéAL CGJ - Chaire de Gouvernance et Juricomptabilité - HEC Montréal - HEC Montréal
Denis Darpy: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Purpose – The aim of the research presented in this paper is to enhance our understanding of self-gift giving behavior. Self-regulatory theory isused as a conceptual support to achieve this objective. The main idea that is explored is that consumers' self-gift purchase intentions vary acrosscontexts and situations to the extent that these are compatible or not with their self-regulatory mindset, whether it is chronic or situational.Design/methodology/approach – Two studies, using a scenario-based experiment, were conducted to investigate the effects that regulatory focushas on consumers' intentions to buy themselves a gift.Findings – The results support the proposition that the chronic form of regulatory focus in success and failure situations has a significant impacton the intention to purchase a gift to oneself and show that the situational form of regulatory focus has an influence on self-gift purchase intentionas well. They also confirm that situations that are congruent with consumers' self-regulatory mindset lead to stronger self-gift purchase intentions.Originality/value – The main contribution of this research lies in delineating the role that some specific dispositional and situational factors playin shaping consumers' perceptions of success and failure events and how this impacts the eventual purchase of a gift to oneself. This contrasts withprevious research on self-gift giving, where success and failure situations are assumed to be perceived similarly by consumers. Marketing managerswishing to stimulate consumers' propensity to buy themselves gifts should consider using regulatory focus as a segmentation basis. Marketingcommunications should be adapted to consumers' self-regulatory mindset.

Keywords: Mindset; Prevention focus; Promotion focus; Self regulation; Self-gift (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Journal of Consumer Marketing, 2016, 33 (6), pp.447-457. ⟨10.1108/JCM-05-2015-1417⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02373662

DOI: 10.1108/JCM-05-2015-1417

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().