Gift giving to children at Christmas and birthdays.

Bremner, P.

Abstract

This paper explores gift giving of toys to children at Christmas and Birthdays and their perception of the gift giver. Three areas are discussed; gift giving, the methodological approach and the results and conclusions. Gift giving is an historical concept relating to exchanges of gifts representing many symbols and meanings. Toys are often given to children at birthdays and Christmas and the perception of the gift giver may be affected by many things. The long-term impact may alter the relationship between the child and parent. Miscommunication is often cited as being an influence on the level of disappointment that may occur. Four drawing sessions were conducted with preschool children from two nurseries. The aim of these sessions was to identify what the childrens favourite toy gift was at Christmas and birthday time, who had given it to them and what they thought of the giver. The pictorial results were coded and results concluded that almost all the children could identify their favourite toy gifts. A majority were satisfied with their gifts and most surprisingly identified Santa as the gift giver for Birthday toys as well as Christmas. Most children could not represent their feeling of the gift giver pictorially and interestingly enough mum was not mentioned once as a giver of gifts!

Citation

BREMNER, P. 2008. Gift giving to children at Christmas and birthdays. Presented at the 2008 Annual conference of the Academy of Marketing (AM2008): reflective marketing in a material world, 8-10 July 2008, Aberdeen, UK.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: 2008 Annual conference of the Academy of Marketing (AM2008)
• Start Date: Jul 8, 2008
• End Date: Jul 10, 2008
• Deposit Date: Feb 9, 2010
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 9, 2010
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Children; Artwork; Gift giving; Qualitative; Consumer behaviour
• Public URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10059/462
• Contract Date: Feb 9, 2010