Gift giving in mass consumption markets

Abstract

Spanish

French

What types of social relationships and expressions of moral economy does gift giving foster in mass consumption markets? Approaching this issue through the literature on gift giving in advanced capitalist contexts and the sociology of markets, this study presents gifting as a micro-foundational element in contemporary markets. Analysis of 50 interviews and documentation of daily sales encounters in a computer chain store in Tel-Aviv, Israel, found that buyers and sellers there exchange three types of gifts (contractual, closing and post-sale gifts) ordered along a continuum according to degree of subordination to the market economy and logic. Empirical investigation of four research propositions derived from the literature reveals that marketplace gifting fosters various types of relationships, both horizontal and vertical. The study suggests that gifting helps constitute ephemeral ties during brief sales encounters through the invocation of archetypical social roles, which encapsulate types of social relationships with others. The discussion highlights the contribution of this study to the sociology of markets and to gift theory and presents questions for future research.

Keywords

Consumer markets gift-giving gifts and social relationships gift theory sales encounters sociology of markets

Introduction

Mass consumption markets, the backbone of advanced capitalist economies, have subsumed the cultural institution of gift giving, which operates in those contexts in at least two distinct ways. Most obviously, gifting boosts consumption and helps sustain mass markets. This effect is most evident during holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day, when kinship, social obligation, gratitude and love all carry a price tag. On these occasions, the commodities people purchase are transformed into gifts through marketing and ceremonial giving (Miller, 1998). Gift giving, however, has a second, more hidden and less explored, role in the operation of mass consumption markets. Gifting as a form of social interaction that occurs as part of sales encounters is a micro-foundational element of these markets, supporting the ongoing exchange of commodities. Gifting constitutes social ties and also allows the integration of a moral economy into market exchange, which treats transactions in terms of good or bad and just or unfair. Focusing on the hidden role of gifting inside market exchange, this study poses the following question: What types of social relationships and expressions of moral economy are fostered in mass consumption markets through gift giving? Answering this question contributes to the sociology of markets by depicting how gifting helps constitute the micro-foundations of mass consumption markets. Furthermore, it contributes to gift theory by documenting and explaining the different ways the cultural institution of gifting is embedded within a context dominated by economic rationality and utilitarian motives.

Gift theory is vast and extends to many academic fields, such as sociology (e.g. Cheal, 1988; Giesler, 2006), anthropology (Malinowski, 1932; Mauss, 1954 [1925]; Sahlins, 1972; Sherry, 1983), consumer research and consumer culture (Belk and Coon, 1993; Belk and Sherry, 2007), history (Zemon Davis, 2000), organization studies (Lombardo, 1995) and even philosophy (Derrida, 1995). Studies of gift giving have been conducted in a variety of research settings, ranging from the scientific community (Hyde, 1983) to relatives and friends (Cheal, 1986; Yan, 1996), blood donations (Titmuss, 1971), tobacco auctions (Smith, 1990: 63), intra-community gifting (Weinberger and Wallendorf, 2012) and online music sharing (Giesler, 2006). As Komter (2007: 93–94) points out, ‘Gift exchange has a variety of functions, for instance, economic, social, moral, religious, aesthetic and juridical ones, which is why Marcel Mauss called it a “total social phenomenon” ’. While the notion of the ‘pure gift’ motivated only by the desire to please the other and sacrifice oneself does appear in the literature (e.g. Derrida, 1995), most studies fall within two other research streams, one economic and one symbolic and expressive (see Joy, 2001: 240–241 for a short discussion). The economic stream highlights utilitarian motives for giving and treats gifting as a balanced, strategic, self-motivated activity designed to obligate the exchange partner to reciprocate (Bourdieu, 1977, 2005; Humphrey and Hugh-Jones, 1992; Smith, 1990). To be sure, treating gifting as a form of strategic or manipulative giving is not restricted to direct market exchange. Bourdieu (1977), for example, describes a more general relational space gift giving constitutes between giver and recipient and asserts that this social space can be manipulated by both parties.

The research stream that promotes a symbolic and expressive model of gifting draws on Mauss’s (1954 [1925]) discussion of the inalienability of the gift. This stream attempts to move away from a purely economic, rational and functional model and to utilize a much broader perspective developed by Belk and Coon (1993) that integrates rituals, symbolism, moral judgments and the performance of identity (see also Giesler, 2006; Weinberger and Wallendorf, 2012). All these variables contribute to the reproduction of social relations through gifting. In line with critical studies of gifting, this study of mass consumption markets combines the economic and symbolic approaches. Gifting is treated here as part of what Thompson (2003: 87–111) dubs ‘the general economy of excess’. Unlike the ‘restricted economy of productivity’, which reflects an economistic view and the formal modeling of market exchange, gifting in the economy of excess, according to Thompson (2003: 94), might include the expression of moral obligation and judgment, and even the public destruction of wealth. Cheal (1986: 433), who explored how kinship, status and class shape patterns of Christmas gifting in Canada, concludes that ‘the fact that important Christmas gifts are rarely used as social support suggests that the study of symbolic processes deserves much more attention’.

The classic works of Mauss (1954 [1925]) and Malinowski (1932) created an implicit association between preindustrial societies and gift exchange, on the one hand, and between advanced capitalist societies and commodity exchange, on the other hand (for a discussion, see Bird David, 1997). This distinction is echoed in Gregory’s (1982) association of gifts with ‘clan society’ and of commodities with ‘class society’, the latter a social structure typical of advanced capitalism. Parry (1986), however, rejects this distinction and argues that both gifting and commodity exchange involve a combination of self-interested and communal forms of behavior. Research drawing on Parry’s argument has exposed the existence of a vibrant gift economy in the midst of advanced western markets (Godelier, 1999; Herrmann, 1997). Related studies find growing evidence suggesting that commodity and gift exchange not only exist side by side in advanced capitalist markets but are also mutually supportive. This literature suggests, then, that gifting can be presented as a venue through which the moral economy is integrated into contemporary market exchange. However, the relevant findings have not been systematically applied to the study of the micro-foundations of mass consumption markets. Drawing on this broad literature, I therefore proffer Proposition 1, which encapsulates the general argument of this article: In mass consumption markets, gifts are used to express moral obligation and emotions and to single out some social ties as extending purely monetary relationships.

Given the focus of this article, the following section delves deeper into the different streams of literature on gifting and the constitution of social relationships. I then present more fine-grained propositions directly derived from this literature review.

Gifting and the constitution of social relationships

The role gifting plays in the reproduction of social ties and the broader moral order is a persistent theme in gift theory (Cheal, 1986; Titmuss, 1971; Zemon Davis, 2000). Gifts are employed in contemporary society to reinforce a variety of relationships, ranging from kinship and friendship ties (Cheal, 1988; Joy, 2001; Komter, 2007; Yan, 1996) to interorganizational relations (Kreiner and Schultz, 1993), authority relations in Japanese workplaces (Daniels, 2009), ties to the local community through corporate philanthropy (Lombardo, 1995) and even ties between expatriates and their home countries that facilitate inward investments in those places (Lainer-Vos, 2012). The centrality of the interrelation of gift and social relationships is echoed in Cheal’s (1988: 19) definition of a gift economy ‘as a system of redundant transactions within a moral economy, which makes possible the extended reproduction of social relations’.

While the literature on gifting and social relationships is vast, relatively little scholarly attention has been given to gifting that occurs as part of face-to-face encounters between salespeople and potential buyers in mass consumption markets. These markets represent a unique research context, one in which gifting does not adhere to some of the basic assumptions regarding dyadic gift giving (e.g. Belk, 2010; Otnes et al., 1993). For example, sellers and buyers in mass markets are typically total strangers and are unlikely to meet again once a sales encounter is completed. Without prior knowledge of a customer, a salesperson is also unlikely to try and match a gift to that person’s personality or inner needs. Finally, gifts in mass consumption markets are expected to forge ephemeral and fragile ties that facilitate the ongoing exchange of commodities rather than reproduce deeply entrenched social bonds. Yet I argue that even under these unique conditions gifts have a reproductive function – not of pre-existing dyadic relationships but, rather, of archetypical social roles such as consultant or friend, each encapsulating a distinct social relationship with others.

The types of relationships produced and reproduced through gift giving can be broadly divided into horizontal and vertical ones. A striking historical example of how gifts were used to forge vertical employment relationships in 16th-century France concerns the ‘denier a dieu’, or ‘God’s penny’, given by masters to servants or journeymen at the close of an employment contract (Zemon Davis, 2000). An existing social hierarchy, comprising vertical relationships involving servants, masters, and even God looking over the contract, was reproduced through this type of gifting. Within the same historical context, Zemon Davis also describes the affirmation of horizontal social relationships through gifting when she analyzes the association between the use of the term ‘friend’ and what she calls ‘gifts of generosity’. These gifts symbolize a bond between two equals who trust one another and who seek the continuation of their relationship without direct reference to a clear motive. In light of the distinction gift theory makes between horizontal and vertical relationships (e.g. Weinberger and Wallendorf, 2012), I present Proposition 2: In mass consumption markets, gifting is employed by sellers and buyers to invoke symbolic images of broadly accepted social roles that denote dyadic links of both horizontal (e.g. friendship) and vertical relationships (e.g. with actors of higher or lower socio-economic standing).

According to the expressive model, gift giving promotes affectual ties and conveys an array of emotions such as love, gratitude, generosity and intimacy (Cheal, 1988; Joy, 2001; Komter, 2007). Joy (2001), for example, describes how her Hong Kong interviewees use categories such as ‘romantic other’, ‘close friend’, ‘good friend’ and ‘hi-bye friend’ to classify their social ties and how they associate distinct types of gifts and gifting practices with these categories of relationships. Weinberger and Wallendorf (2012: 84) assert that, despite debate regarding the role of gratitude as a form of reciprocity in contemporary gift economy, in the Mardi Gras celebration they studied ‘expressions of gratitude prevail’. They argue that ‘beyond its immediate emotional impact, our analysis indicates that gratitude has an important structural outcome. Gratitude is essential in the process of conferring status on givers.’ In line with the symbolic and expressive model of gift giving, my Proposition 3 postulates: Some forms of gifting in mass consumption markets facilitate the expression of emotions such as satisfaction, joy and gratitude, each denoting a different type of social relationship between buyers and sellers.

Gifts in the form of donations and corporate philanthropy are said to create and enhance social cohesiveness by forging intra-community ties (Weinberger and Wallendorf, 2012). Such ties may stimulate further gifting. Kreiner and Schultz (1993), for example, argue that relationships established among Danish scientists who were educated and socialized together at university and who now work for different firms provide the social infrastructure for a vibrant barter and gift economy in the Danish bio-tech industry. In turn, the flow of objects enhances collaborative relationships and sustains a sense of community among the scientists. In line with this literature, I present Proposition 4: A voluntary gifting economy exists among salespeople that creates and sustains social ties within the occupational community and enhances social cohesiveness on the sales floor.

Studies of gifting in contemporary society typically describe how social variables such as kinship, social status and economic standing structure distinct patterns of gift giving. This study takes the reverse perspective. On the basis of empirical observation of gifting in a computer chain store, it explores the kinds of relationships invoked through different types of gifting.

Site and methods

This study is based on 50 interviews, 41 with salespeople and branch managers working for an Israeli chain store that sells computers and computer accessories and games and nine with suppliers and IT purchasers. An important supplement to the interviews consists of extensive observations carried out by two research assistants at one of the chain’s branch stores and the documentation of 122 complete sales interactions, some brief and others lasting over 20 minutes. This documentation took place during 21 separate observation sessions conducted at different times of the day and on different days of the week. Each session lasted about three hours.

Direct observation in this context is a particularly useful tool, generating information and insights that might otherwise be overlooked. It allows the behavior and sense making of market actors to be documented in real time, independent of any post hoc rationalizations the actors make. It also captures data that market actors may dismiss as unimportant. For example, some sales activities are conducted automatically, in a taken-for-granted manner, with little if any consciousness on the part of sellers and buyers. These interactions might not be reported by actors during formal interviews and, in the absence of direct observation, would not become part of the empirical core of the study.

The salespeople in this research knew that the study was taking place and were aware they were under observation. This knowledge might have had an impact on their behavior, but, given that the study lasted for over eight months, they probably got used to being observed. Most customers became aware of being observed only after a sales interaction was over, so one can assume they behaved naturally. Handwritten accounts of interactions were supplemented by contextual information, such as the exact location of each interaction within the store, a short description of the people involved and, whenever possible, notations of their facial expressions and gestures at different points in the interaction. Most interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed in full; some were summarized in writing and expanded shortly afterward on a computer. The original interviews were carried out and observation notes were made in Hebrew. Data were analyzed using Atlas software. The data analysis which follows presents key examples of sales interactions, drawn from both interviews and observations, which I translated into English.

The retail chain under study has 56 branches nationwide and employs about 400 workers. The local branch where the observations took place and that became the focus of study is ranked high among all branches in terms of gross sales. It is a busy branch, located in a large shopping mall in Tel-Aviv. It employs 12 workers, a number that increases to 15 during the summer vacation. Five salespeople work during busy shifts. There are clear peak sales hours at the branch, mainly during the evening and on weekends and holidays, when 30–50 customers might be in the store at the same time. A regular work shift for salespeople is seven hours.

The branch has one manager, two deputy managers, a stock keeper and floor salespeople. The workers, as well as the managers, are mostly in their twenties, which probably reflects the transitory nature of sales jobs as well as the tendency of young people to be technically savvy. The store’s young employees have completed their compulsory army service and usually work as salespeople for a year or two and then move on to other careers or to sales jobs elsewhere. A few become branch managers within the chain. The division of sales labor is as follows: The salespeople attend to the customers, answer the phone and operate the cash register; handle dissatisfied customers who return merchandise; and are responsible for cleaning the store at the end of the day. They are paid a low hourly rate, close to the minimum wage, and in addition earn a commission on sales and receive vouchers from some of the distributors whose products they sell. The store manager performs administrative tasks and communicates with chain headquarters and, whenever needed, assists the salespeople on the floor. The two deputy managers replace the manager on some of the shifts and otherwise work as regular salespeople.

Purchasing in the chain is centralized and managed by purchasing agents at chain headquarters. While branches can communicate directly with suppliers through specialized software to request specific items and quantities, the final decision regarding purchasing of merchandise is always made by headquarters. The branch manager and his or her deputies are in charge of accepting merchandise from distributors and taking inventory. The stock keeper is in charge of the store’s small storage space and continually keeps track of items sold and restocks shelves. While purchasing is centralized, the company has not instituted any formal training programs for its sales force. This might be seen as an inferior HR practice when viewed against standards in other sectors of the economy. In fact, some of the salespeople’s training is outsourced to distributors of leading brands, who have direct ties to the store. For example, representatives of leading distributors visit the branch to introduce new products and promotional schemes. They also occasionally train salespeople directly in selling their products. All these activities are done with the approval of chain headquarters. Much of the training, however, is conducted on the job and is nested within the occupational group. Novices, who must have above-average knowledge of computers, accompany the more experienced salespeople and often ask their advice.

Gifting is widespread in Israeli consumer markets and can be observed in supermarkets, pharmacy chains and bookstores. The computer chain is not exceptional in this respect. Different types of gifting occur on the sales floor of the retail branch under study here, as the next section describes. The data on gifting are derived from interviews and observations of sales encounters. As in mathematics, the findings provide an ‘existence theorem’ or a ‘proof of existence’ for gifting practices and no generalizability of the findings is argued.

Findings

Studies of gifting practices originated within anthropology and focused on pre-capitalist societies, in which narrow economic reasoning and monetary relations were not central. By contrast, the basic social relations between sellers and buyers in this case study are monetary relations underlying attempts to conduct an economic transaction. Nevertheless, even on the shop floor in mass consumption markets a gift economy exists that can be broadly described as involving three types of exchanges: contractual gifts, gifts at the closing of deals and post-sale gifts. Even though gift giving in mass consumer markets is often manipulative and its manipulative nature is obvious to buyers and sellers alike, the explicit use of the term ‘gift’ by my informants (‘Mattana’ in Hebrew) makes a clear reference to the cultural institution of gifting.

The three types of gift giving in mass consumption markets can be ordered along a continuum representing varying degrees of subordination to market economy and logic. Market logic is predicated on utilitarian motives, strategic planning and the application of narrow rational reasoning. Subordination of gifting occurs when elements of market logic come to dominate the motives for and manner of gift giving. On one end, representing full subordination to the market economy and logic, stands the contractual gift. This form of gifting is based, for example, on management’s and suppliers’ promises to allocate ‘gifts’ to salespeople in conjunction with the sale of predetermined numbers of commodities. Importantly, this form of gifting does not involve face-to-face interactions between the giver and the receiver.

Contractual gifting falls within the domain of business-to-business (B-B) relations, since the distributors offer gifts to employees of the chain and indirectly to the chain itself. Advertisements can also promise buyers ‘a gift’ in conjunction with the purchase of a product, a form of business-to-client (B-C) giving.

The closing gift is offered to some buyers to convince them to close a deal. It is positioned more to the center of the continuum, still representing a strong subordination of gifting to market economy and logic, and its main function is to constitute arm’s-length ties for the purpose of direct economic returns. The closing gift is still a commodity, though one that is transformed to a degree. It is paid for by the chain, not by the salesperson who offers it, and represents a business-to-client (B-C) form of giving that takes place during face-to-face sales interactions. Yet here gifting is optional rather than contractual. The salesperson can decide if and when to offer the client a closing gift. He or she also makes a limited attempt to adapt the gift to the needs of the client, offering an item that is related to the product the client wishes to purchase.

Finally, at the opposite end of the continuum from the contractual gift stands the post-sale gift, offered by either a seller or a buyer after a deal is sealed. Some post-sales gifting represents the B-C form of exchange, since the salesperson offers the buyer a gift from the chain’s inventory after the deal is finalized. It can be seen as a means of promoting customer loyalty as well as expressing gratitude to the client. Yet other post-sale gifts are the property of the person – either the salesperson or the client – who offers them. This is the most expressive, dynamic and flexible form of gifting in the mass consumption market studied. It represents what I call person-to-person exchange (P-P). As the examples below reveal, post-sale gifting is employed by sellers and buyers to convey emotion, express friendship, communicate gratitude and reproduce social hierarchies. The general practice of gifting in mass consumption markets is infused with ambiguity, as market actors easily shift from a strategic and rational conception of gifting to an emotional and normative mode of giving and reciprocating. Only the post-sale gift can be seen as clearly diverging from the logic of market exchange. Nevertheless, pre-sale and closing gifts also deserve attention, since they represent distinctive patterns of subordination of the notion of the gift to the logic of the market.

Contractual gifts

A few major distributors, mainly of portable computers and computer games, offer salespeople monetary incentives to sell their products. They do so with the permission of the store managers. In addition, the distributors offer salespeople what they call ‘gift certificates’ that can be used to purchase computer products they distribute. For a good salesperson, gift certificates can amount to 10% of total income. This form of gifting is formal and contractual in nature, and receipt of the gift depends on the salesperson selling specified quantities of certain products. Salespeople know that they will receive a gift certificate once they complete the requisite sales.

In addition to gift certificates, both the chain and distributors have instituted a variety of sales contests with prizes awaiting the winners. The prizes are sometimes called ‘gifts’ by management and salespeople. Here, one salesperson describes the kinds of prizes offered by suppliers to contest participants:

There are all kinds of contests: whoever sells the most tabletop computers gets an MP3 player worth about 2000 NIS [about US$500]. Whoever sells the most computer screens of Brand X gets a weekend [i.e. a vacation in a hotel].

Note that the speaker regards the prizes as elements in an economic transaction and does not use the term ‘gift’. In another instance, the chain reached a deal with a major distributor to buy a large quantity of a certain brand of products. To encourage sales of the products in its different branches, chain management offered ‘gift certificates’ redeemable at a variety of stores for products ranging from food to home appliances. A salesperson explained:

Let’s say now, we received a large quantity of Brand X; so they [management] want to push it. So they tell us ‘whoever sells brand X gets 10 NIS worth of gift certificates’, and for us this means clothes, food for those who live on their own, and this is not only 10 NIS, since you don’t sell one product a month. It can easily get to 400 NIS [about US$100].

This sum of money is a substantial supplement to salespeople’s low basic pay. It is important to note, and informants stressed, that the store did not require salespeople to sell the Brand X products but merely offered ‘gifts’ as an incentive for them to do so. The use of the Hebrew term ‘Mattana’ here is no more than a rhetorical device, as the so-called gift is contractual in nature. This form of gifting constitutes a monetary relationship and should be seen as an integral part of a market economy. The cultural notion of the gift is completely subsumed by market logic, which leaves it empty of normative meaning. In fact, the contractual gift should be seen as part of the chain’s broader commission system. Yet the rhetorical choice to call the bonus a ‘gift’ might hint that management wants to differentiate this type of payment from regular salary and to stress the dependency of salespeople on its good will.

Contractual gifts and commissions offered by management at times have an unexpected consequence. When used to promote the sale of low quality products they provoke employee resentment, which suggests that some salespeople have a moral code that guides their salesmanship. In expressing resistance to contractual gifts, some salespeople explicitly use moral argumentation, judging management’s suggestions in ‘good’ and ‘bad’ terms and comparing the prescribed practices with what they perceive as good salesmanship. The salespeople’s reaction provides insights into the moral aspects of sales, to which I return in discussing the post-sale gift.

The contractual gift also takes the form of formal offers to potential buyers, as part of marketing campaigns, in conjunction with the purchase of certain items. A typical offer is: ‘Buy a portable computer and get a carrying bag as a gift’. Here too giving is impersonal and obligating. Despite the explicit use of the term ‘gift’, this case can be seen as nothing more than a price reduction.

A second type of gifting in mass consumption markets employs gifts to entice buyers to finalize a deal. Salespeople call these gifts ‘closing gifts’. The closing gift is subsumed by market logic to a lesser extent than the contractual gift.

Closing gifts

When the buyer is close to making a final purchasing decision but still hesitates, the salesperson sometimes offers him or her an item as a gift. The following excerpt from an interview with a salesperson illustrates this type of gifting:

How do you close a deal?

You always keep something for the end, something that will allow the closing, this might be a gift, let us say in a deal involving portable computers, sometime we give a nice carrying bag for it, depending on the specific transaction. With most portables this is the way we do it. Or with regular computers it might be a mouse, something as a gift. We always keep something small to the end that will give him [the client] the last ‘push’ [said in English] of ‘OK, let’s go, you’ve convinced me’.

According to this salesperson, and to others who were interviewed, the gifts offered to close deals were typically related to the products being purchased. For example, to entice a customer to buy an iPad, the salesperson might offer a protective cover as a gift. The nature of the item as a gift is explicitly presented by the seller as part of the sales interaction. Despite its rhetorical presentation as a gift, the offer should be seen as a closing device only partly based on the norm of reciprocity. As Bird David and Darr (2009) demonstrated in the case of the ‘mass-gift’, the buyer can quickly translate the closing gift into monetary terms, effectively transforming its cultural meaning into an extra price reduction. Thus, in a sales encounter, an object can become and ‘un-become’ a gift according to the context and the interests of the participants (on this kind of transformation at US garage sales, see Herrmann, 1997). While gifting as a cultural institution becomes part of the sales encounter, it is also clear that the closing gift imposes little if any obligation on the recipient to reciprocate, other than by consenting to close the deal. The closing gift can be considered a gift in the sense that it alludes to cultural scripts of giving known to the salesperson and the buyer alike but to which the buyer is unlikely to reciprocate beyond agreeing to the purchase. Furthermore, reciprocation here is not future-oriented, as is customary in a gift economy, and the buyer is expected to close the deal immediately after the gift is offered. One can also view the closing gift as the seller’s way of acknowledging the buyer’s freedom to purchase the goods at a different store or to try and negotiate a price reduction.

Salespeople perceive the closing gift mainly in strategic terms, its purpose being to employ the limited obligation attached to a buyer’s social role as a gift receiver to their advantage. In the following interview excerpt, a salesperson elaborates on this point:

A good salesperson knows what he needs to give in order to close a deal. There are clients who know how to extract many gifts and price reductions on their way to buying, and there are those who won’t buy unless you give them something. When we give gifts we lower our profit margins and our commission. A price reduction is less money, but if I don’t give enough I can also lose the deal. It is important to find the balance.

The speaker clearly describes the offer of the closing gift as a sales strategy guided by economic rationality: salespeople should try to offer the product that is least expensive or that retains the highest profit margin. Yet, by defining this type of exchange as gifting, they try to benefit from the cultural meaning of the gift within Israeli society, demonstrating generosity on their part and expecting obligation from the client in return. The preceding excerpt also demonstrates that buyers are familiar with the use of gifts in mass consumption markets and that some of them even consider the gift a right to which they are entitled. Note that the salesperson quoted above is aware that buyers also translate gifts into monetary value. That is, both buyers and sellers treat gift giving in mass consumer markets as a flexible process, in that it involves a resource that can become and un-become a gift. Another interesting aspect of this excerpt, which conforms to a more narrowly economic model, is its depiction of gifting as part of a balanced transaction. The salesperson seems to be saying that sellers sometimes need to give a gift in addition to the commodity being purchased to balance an exchange.

Contractual gifts and closing gifts represent only two elements in the gift economy in mass consumption markets. In fact, gifts are sometimes offered to clients after a deal is already sealed, in what I call ‘post-sale gifting’. The post-sale gift illuminates how the duality of market and moral economies plays out on the sales floor. Market and moral economies represent forms of exchange that are analytically distinct but are empirically intertwined and even mutually supportive. The key empirical examples presented below combine the different facets of gift economy, but for analytical purposes, I highlight aspects that are most central and most relevant to my four research propositions.

The post-sale gift

Offering gifts to clients after a deal is already sealed is less common than offering closing gifts. While narrow economic reasoning and self-interested behavior can account for the closing gift, they can hardly explain post-sale gifting, for which we need to rely on a broader theoretical perspective. The first proposition I presented set forth the following: In mass consumption markets gifts are used to express moral obligation and emotions and to single out some social ties as extending purely monetary relationships. One form of post-sale gifting involves small items, free advice, information or extra services for the customer. Post-sale gifting is triggered, for example, when an order is delayed and salespeople feel uncomfortable about it. One of them explained:

I ordered a computer [for a customer] two weeks ago and it was delayed once and again; there was some problem with the delivery, and he [the customer] didn’t get it on time. There is a feeling that you’ve strung him along. You didn’t really do it but this how the customer feels so you give him a mouse or another computer accessory.

Here, the gift is meant to compensate for poor delivery service. Although delivery is beyond his control, the salesperson feels morally responsible for the customer’s plight. The gift here becomes a symbol of a moral obligation. Gifting is employed to invoke the image of a trustworthy salesperson who extends social obligation into market exchange, an image this salesperson wishes to maintain despite the client’s disappointment. The salesperson expresses the feeling that the client has been wronged and that he has a moral obligation toward the client, an obligation that is part of being a trustworthy salesperson. Through gifting, the salesperson depicts his relationship to the buyer not in terms of arm’s-length or contractual ties but, rather, as involving normative aspects. In fact, some salespeople define their professional responsibilities in much broader terms than set out in the chain store’s formal guidelines. They have a clear perception of what constitutes good salesmanship, a perception widely shared among their peers and one that stands, at times, at odds with management’s views. For example, one salesperson told a story about a client who purchased a computer and subsequently got poor service from one of the chain’s sub-contractors, who was supposed to install the computer in the customer’s home and connect it to the Internet. The salesperson presents a moral argument in his story and, like the employee in the previous example, invokes an image of a trustworthy salesperson through an act of gifting:

I decided that I would not leave this person alone, without any help … after all he bought and paid. You shouldn’t treat him like that! I spoke with him. I went to his house and I installed his computer, even upgraded it slightly. I hooked him up to the Internet. And he wanted to give me [money] since I spent about an hour and a half, but I didn’t want to take it. The guy lives in a small apartment in Tel-Aviv. I won’t take away his bread and butter or whatever he has.

The speaker asserts that the customer fulfilled his economic obligation (‘after all he bought and paid’) and, thus, should have received the technical assistance. Although he acknowledges that the store was not directly responsible for the lapse, the sub-contractor’s failure invoked moral sentiments in the salesperson: he feels that the store and that he as its representative are obliged to ensure the technical assistance is provided. Although he could continue to follow market logic and blame the sub-contractor, he expresses a moral obligation to the client who was wronged. The tension between market logic and a moral economy is reflexively resolved by the salesperson deciding to offer assistance himself. He gives his client a post-sale gift in the form of free technical services, as if to balance the man’s mistreatment. It is important to note that the salesperson wishes to position his act within a gift economy. He does so through his refusal to accept monetary remuneration and by positively juxtaposing his act to the ethos of the market economy. His reference to the customer’s ‘bread and butter’ suggests the client is not well off and also reflects moral considerations. In sum, the post-sale gifting described above is employed to express the salesperson’s moral obligation, to signal that his relationship to the client extends beyond arm’s-length ties and to integrate a moral economy into market exchange.

The following examples of post-sale gifting are relevant to my Proposition 2: In mass consumption markets, gifting is employed by sellers and buyers to invoke symbolic images of broadly accepted social roles that denote types of dyadic links of both horizontal (e.g. friendship) and vertical relationships (e.g. with actors with higher or lower socio-economic standing). An empirical example of the invocation of horizontal ties of friendship emerged when a salesperson described how the item he offered buyers as the post-sale gift was his own property. Responding to an interview question about what constitutes a difficult sale, the salesperson spoke about this encounter:

Yes, the Barr family, I won’t forget them. A father and two sons, already about 26 or 27 years old, real cool guys, really nice, and they wanted three computers, a laptop for each of them … they showed me price quotes from DFD [a competing chain store] and other places. ‘Convince us to buy from you’, they said. This was a deal of three computers which lasted a week … they came and went … So in the end we got to a place where we saw which computer they wanted and they also wanted a game as a gift. I couldn’t get them a gift so I needed to give them one of my games from home since I have stocks of them and I wanted them to be satisfied since we already became friends … It was after the deal. It wasn’t ‘if I don’t get the game I won’t buy’, it was after the deal was closed and we already became friends so I told him, ‘OK, I’ll bring you one of mine’, I have no problem with that.

Selling three portable computers to the Barr family was a sizable deal that had already been closed when the post-sale gift was offered. No narrow economic reasoning can explain the offer of a personal computer game as a post-gift gift. I argue that gifting is employed here to position the buyers and the seller on more equal ground, a goal echoed in the salesperson’s use of the term ‘friends’ to describe the type of relationship he invokes through the post-sale gifting of his private property. This is a clear indication that such gifting is employed to constitute horizontal social ties. Zemon Davis (2000) has associated the use of the term ‘friend’ with what she calls ‘gifts of generosity’. Indeed, the personal gift to the Barr family and the use of the term ‘friends’ direct us to view the gifting just described as an act of generosity that references friendship ties the salesperson may want to maintain outside the market. By deviating from a rational or a calculative form of behavior, the salesperson performs an expressive act by which he symbolically demonstrates that he is not motivated merely by narrow economic interest but also by a sense of friendship with the clients. Yet an economic approach to gifting is not completely absent here. This excerpt might also convey that the salesperson is very satisfied with his professional accomplishment (the closing of this large and long sale) and wants to reciprocate and create a more balanced transaction by offering the post-sale gift.

One of the surprising features of post-sale gifting in consumer markets is the active role and social agency of customers. They not only receive or explicitly expect gifts from sellers but at times also offer a variety of post-sale gifts themselves. These gifts include job offers, invitations for coffee and sums of money. On one occasion, a buyer who presented himself as a barber offered the salesperson a free haircut after the sale was completed. Through post-sale gifting, the barber expressed an interest in constituting horizontal ties by invoking an image of himself as a service provider seeking to reciprocate by prolonging and balancing the service relationship between himself and the store employee.

Vertical social ties were also constituted through post-sale gifting. One salesperson offered a detailed account of a post-sale gift from a customer in which this was the case. Here the constitution of hierarchical ties reflecting social distance and economic power looms large:

There was this rich man, a businessman. One day he simply came and wanted a computer for about 10,000 NIS [about US$2500]. He sat down with me, I did the best I could, and then we reached a situation where he already wanted the computer, but with a price reduction. He wanted to pay in cash. I checked the profit margins, I spoke with my manager. At that time I was relatively new, about half a year, and he [the store manager] told me, give him a 4% reduction. This is something like 200–300 NIS, no, even more, sorry, 400 NIS. But he [the client] kept on insisting that he wants more and all that, so we somehow made a phone call to the [chain] CEO, and at the end we got him an extra 1–2% reduction. After we counted the money and all, he took out the amount of the price reduction, about 500 NIS, and put it in my pocket, and I tell him, ‘What’s with you? Why are you doing this? You drove me crazy getting you this reduction!’ So he says, ‘So, why do you think I wanted a price reduction? Do I look like someone who needs money?’ He simply insisted so much on the price reduction in order to tip me.

The customer in this case is able to lower the price of the computer he wants to purchase through direct monetary negotiation, without asking for gifts of any sort. He then uses his savings to tip the salesperson. Tipping a salesperson is highly uncommon in Israel. Reacting to the salesperson’s astonishment at the casual manner in which he gives away the price reduction he has worked so hard to achieve, the customer alludes to his own affluent dress and manner and asks if he looks like someone who needs the money. More generally, this example illustrates how the sales floor provides a symbolic stage on which social identities are performed. Through post-sale gifting, the customer directly invokes the image of an affluent person and defines the relationship between himself and the salesperson as a hierarchical one. Weinberger and Wallendorf (2012) have argued that a recipient’s gratitude and acknowledgment of a giver’s proclaimed higher economic status can be seen as constituting a form of reciprocity.

As I discuss below, post-sale gifting here is more an expressive act demonstrating negotiation skills and economic might than an act of obligation or strategic giving. To sum up, the invocation of horizontal and vertical ties through gift giving, as suggested in Proposition 2, receives empirical support. Such ties are established through person-to-person exchange of private gifts between sellers and buyers.

Complementing salespeople’s descriptions during interviews of an elaborate gift economy, the observations conducted at the computer chain allow us to examine first-hand how gifting is mobilized in sales encounters. Proposition 3 states: Some forms of gifting in mass consumption markets facilitate the expression of emotions such as satisfaction, joy and gratitude, each denoting a different type of social relationship between buyers and sellers. The following sales interaction shows how post-sale gifting is employed to convey gratitude and satisfaction:

[A mother and her daughter, who is in her late twenties, enter the store and walk over to a stand where Hewlett Packard products are on display. The daughter looks at and touches one of the portable computers. A salesperson then approaches.]

Salesperson:

Can I help?

Client:

I’m looking for a portable computer, HP, I used to have one … I purchased it two years ago … I want – I’ll tell you what I need. I need a powerful computer with lots of memory.

For editing?

No, for work.

Okay.

But it has lots of files on it … the computer … what I have is really heavy, you understand? It moves slowly [probably referring to the speed of her processor].

Anything about the weight or the size?

I want it not to be heavy. The one I have now is heavy. I have 15 inches and I want a smaller one …

[The conversation continues, and the seller and the buyer move to another section of the store. They go over the product catalogue. The mother sits next to them but does not participate in the largely technical conversation about the type of processor and the amount of memory the client requires. The seller offers a number of upgrades, and at a certain point he references cost in relation to upgrading the memory.]

If you have a problem with the price you don’t really need it …

[Interrupts] No, price is not a problem, there is no price problem.

[The buyer adds products such as a software package, an Internet camera for her parents, and a four-gigabyte flash drive. The buyer smiles and giggles a lot. The seller finally walks to the cash register with the buyer and starts adding up the bill. The buyer pays in cash and the seller prepares the receipt.]

Okay, since you are paying in cash and smile all the time, I’ll give you the flash drive as a present.

Ohh, you are nice! Thanks!

Post-sale gifting here is clearly a disinterested act and cannot be explained as an attempt to incentivize the customer to purchase. It is also a spontaneous act by the salesperson and cannot be attributed to store policy to obligate the customer to reciprocate through future purchases. In this encounter, the seller offers a gift without the buyer requesting one and with no strategic reason, such as closing the deal, in mind. He declares that the gift is partly in return for a cash payment, but, more importantly, it is in appreciation for the easy-going and positive attitude of the buyer. One could argue that the seller wants to express his gratitude for an easy and lucrative sale and to reward the client for playing her social role as a buyer to perfection. Another way to analyze post-sale gifting here is to see it as an emotional balancing mechanism. The salesperson feels satisfaction about the sale and wants to reciprocate by offering the client a gift. In sum, the data clearly support Proposition 3 and indicate that some forms of post-sale gifting are employed to express emotions such as gratitude and to denote dyadic relationships such as friendship.

My fourth, and final, research proposition relates to the chain’s salespeople as a community of workers: A voluntary gifting economy exists among salespeople that creates and sustains social ties within the occupational community and enhances social cohesiveness on the sales floor. The empirical evidence for the existence of a gift economy among the computer store’s salespeople is scant, and the few examples in the field data are associated with management’s superimposed system of contractual gifting, which allocates prizes to the winners of sales competitions. Management designed the sales competitions and the gifts offered as prizes mainly to individuate the sales force and to constitute competitive relationships among the salespeople. In a few cases, though, the competitions contributed to limited cooperation among the salespeople, rather than their individuation, through voluntary giving within the occupational community. A salesperson recounted his experience of such giving:

See, in the previous branch I worked in, I was also in a competition, so then everybody saw that I am the only one who had a chance to win, so they volunteered to assist me. That was actually very positive. They noticed that I had the best chance to win so they wanted to assist me with what they could, to even transfer sales to me and such.

Each salesperson working for the chain received a 0.75% commission on every sale he or she made. The speaker in this excerpt describes how salespeople at his branch were ready to divert their own sales to a co-worker – thus losing their commissions – to assist that co-worker in winning a chain-based sales competition. While he did not use the term ‘gift’, this support might be considered a type of gifting. Theoretically speaking, it is a form of generalized reciprocity, a type of gifting highlighted within the economic model of gift giving and one that has been used to explain tipping behavior (Azar, 2004). In short, the data fail to point to a meaningful system of grassroots gifting among the members of the sales community under study.

Discussion and conclusions

Gift giving in mass consumption markets operates within a context dominated by market logic, narrow economic interest and strategic planning. This study contributes to gift theory by ordering three types of gifting in such markets along a continuum representing various degrees of subordination to market logic. As summarized in Table 1, the study also explains the differences among the three types of gifts and highlights the outcomes of giving and receiving each type.

Table 1.

Gifts and social relationships in mass consumption markets.

	Contractual gift	Closing gift	Post-sale gift
Degree of subordination to market logic	High	Medium	Low
Type of interaction	Impersonal	Interpersonal	Interpersonal
	Unidirectional	Unidirectional	Bidirectional
	B-B and B-C^a	B-C	B-C and P-P

Outcome	Motivation to sell and buy	Limited obligation to reciprocate by closing a deal	Expression of emotions and integration of a moral economy
Type of relationships	Arm’s-length market ties between chain and customers and salespeople and employer	Hybrid form combining arm’s-length ties and social obligation between giver and receiver	Horizontal and hierarchical ties extending purely monetary relations

B-B = business-to-business; B-C = business-to-client; P-P = person-to-person.

The contractual ‘gift’ is fully subsumed by market logic and should be seen as no more than a rhetorical device that is empty of symbolic or expressive meaning. This form of gifting is part of an elaborate incentive scheme and does not constitute social ties outside existing employment relations. It is impersonal in nature and helps motivate selling and buying. The closing gift integrates into market exchange limited elements of gift economy. It is voluntary and attends to some degree to the client’s needs, since the gift the seller offers is related to the product the buyer is about to purchase. Yet the closing gift is far removed from the cultural notion of a gift and is designed to create no more than a limited obligation that will allow the closing of a deal. When successfully established, the ties constituted by the closing gift are arm’s-length ties. Only the post-sale gift represents a form of exchange that, though still partly subsumed by market logic, is often distinct from market exchange. The post-sale gift retains some of the cultural meaning, expressiveness and flexibility of the gift form and integrates into mass consumption markets elements that economic models are so eager to abstract. Emotions, normative judgment and the performance of social identity are all expressed through post-sale gifting, specifically person-to-person giving and receiving (P-P). Importantly, gifting supports the constitution of ephemeral social ties, which, together with elements of a moral economy, constitute the micro-foundations of mass consumption markets. To be sure, chain stores also use ‘reward cards’, ‘free gifts cards’ and other marketing devices to try and create limited obligation to buy. Yet gift giving, specifically as part of face-to-face encounters, seems to be a more important and flexible resource for constituting different types of social ties inside market exchange.

Few sociologists would dispute the need to produce social relationships, ephemeral and fragile as they might be, as part of economic exchange. This study goes a step further by depicting the mechanism through which the metaphor and the practice of gifting foster social relationships in mass consumption markets. Unlike gifting between family members and friends, which is promoted by marketing campaigns and operates through ceremonial giving on special occasions (Cheal, 1988; Joy, 2001; Komter, 2007; Miller, 1998), gifting between sellers and buyers in mass consumption markets is not predicated on prior relationships; furthermore, sales encounters are brief. Thus, gifting in these settings cannot reproduce pre-existing dyadic relationships. Instead, different types of gifting invoke archetypical social roles, which encapsulate types of obligations and social relationships with others. The invocation of archetypical roles helps imbue the sales encounter with shared meaning and facilitates the constitution of ephemeral social ties during brief interactions.

This article describes how gifting in the context of sales encounters differs from traditional gift giving in larger society. It points to an ambiguity in the metaphoric use of the term ‘gift’. At times, as in the case of the contractual gift, the use of the term ‘gift’ is manipulative and hollow. In other cases the metaphor of the ‘gift’ is more functional, denoting specific behavioral scripts and social roles and relationships that assist in the constitution of ephemeral social ties. The article also identifies a form of more genuine gifting that may occur in market-mediated relationships. Some forms of post-sale gifting (P-P) are employed to convey friendship, gratitude and moral obligation and to perform economic might.

This study’s findings support my Proposition 1 and indicate that post-sale gifting is a venue for the integration of elements of a moral economy into market exchange. In a few documented examples, salespeople offered post-sale gifts in response to moral sentiments they experienced. When they felt that a customer was wronged, they offered extra services or merchandise as gifts to compensate that customer. They explicitly attempted to place these support relationships outside pure market relations and within the context of a moral economy. At times, a conception of good salesmanship encouraged gifting as an expression of moral obligation to the client.

Proposition 2 is derived from a rich literature differentiating the constitution of horizontal ties (e.g. Zemon Davis, 2000) from that of vertical relationships (e.g. Weinberger and Wallendorf, 2012). In line with findings of previous studies in other contexts, gifting by buyers and sellers in the computer store provides an occasion for the invocation of social roles indicating hierarchical or horizontal ties. The constitution of horizontal ties is most apparent in the case of the seller who offers his own computer game to the customers who purchase three portable computers from him. The seller explicitly invokes the archetypical notion of ‘friends’, signaling a type of relationship characterized by acts of generosity (Zemon Davis, 2000). One plausible reading of this framing is that the salesperson wishes to balance the exchange through gifting and to place the exchange partners on an equal footing, an act that is characteristic of horizontal forms of social ties. By contrast, gifting that invokes the image of a benefactor who holds superior economic status establishes a hierarchical relationship, as demonstrated by the buyer who, following intense haggling, offers all the money he has saved to the seller as a tip. In reaction to the seller’s astonishment, the buyer asks if he looks like someone who needs the money. Through this form of gifting, the buyer creates social distance between himself and the seller and constitutes a power relationship. He also uses the sales encounter as a stage to perform his socio-economic affluence to the salesperson and possibly to others.

Proposition 3 is derived from the expressive model of gift giving (e.g. Cheal, 1988; Joy, 2001; Komter, 2007). It asserts that gifting in mass consumption markets facilitates the expression of an array of emotions, each relating to different types of social relationships. The expressive model of gift giving gains empirical support in this study. Post-sales gifts are offered by sellers and buyers to express gratitude, satisfaction with a sale and personal sympathy. One salesperson who spontaneously gives a client a post-sale gift declares that he does so in appreciation of the easy-going and positive attitude of the buyer, who smiled a lot while interacting with him.

Proposition 4, that a gifting economy exists among salespeople, was not empirically supported in this research setting. The only form of free giving among the salespeople occurred in connection with the system of sales contests instigated by management in which gift certificates were awarded to the winners. Explaining the lack of a voluntary gift economy among the salespeople is beyond the scope of this study; the lack might be grounded in management’s persistent attempts to individualize the sales force. Yet, depicting salespeople as a community of workers highlights an important, and neglected, facet of the constitution of markets through social interactions (for exceptions, see Darr, 2006; Knorr Cetina and Bruegger, 2002). It integrates into the sociology of markets elements from the sociology of work and occupations, such as the notion of an occupational community with its own characteristic internal dynamics. Future studies could more systematically explore the role gifting plays within communities of salespeople and sales managers and trace how the internal dynamics within these communities affect the constitution of social relationships in mass consumption markets.

Finally, this study is limited in its generalizability and should be treated as an exploratory endeavor. It provides ‘proof of existence’, to use mathematical vocabulary, ordering types of gifting according to the degree of subordination to market exchange and describing and explaining how and which types of ties are constituted on the shop floor. Yet many important questions remain unanswered. How common are the different types of gifting in mass consumption markets? Can correlations be found between the size of a sale and the propensity of salespeople to extend a post-sale gift? Is the invocation of archetypical social roles through gifting common in other selling and buying contexts? What specific contextual elements promote the use of post-sale gifting? How do clients perceive the closing gift and the post-sale gift? These questions and others await future research.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the anonymous readers whose suggestions contributed significantly to this final version of the article.

Funding

This study was supported by a two year grant from the Israel Science Foundation (grant No. 934/07).

Notes

Author biography

Asaf Darr is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa. His research focuses on the intersection of the sociology of occupations and professions and the sociology of markets. He is the author of Selling Technology: The Changing Shape of Sales in an Information Economy (Cornell University Press, 2006). With Trevor Pinch he published in 2013 ‘Performing sales: Material scripts and the social organization of obligation’ in Organization Studies 34(1): 1601–1621.

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