Skip to main content

Gift Shops: How to stock to meet customer purchasing patterns



If you currently operate a store or website that sells wedding gifts, you’ve probably noticed a pattern in the gift selection your customers make.

If you’re thinking of opening a retail store or site and considering offering gifts, there is a pattern in the purchases people make of which you should be aware.

According to research published in 2013 in the International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, how you select stock price points effects your overall success.  If you think, "I'll offer both expensive and inexpensive gifts," you're on the right track, but you should consider how people purchasing off of gift registries behave.  It's a little more complex than just expensive and cheap.

According to a statistical analysis of the gift "fulfillments" at 500 online wedding gift registries, “wedding guests are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to buying an appropriate gift for the happy couple.”

The rock is the desire of some guests to gain some social benefit with the newlyweds (or perhaps their families) by purchasing an expensive gift.

The hard place is represented by the guests who wish to “enhance their relationship" with the newlyweds while at the same time saving money.

The researchers, based both in South Korea and the U.S., make this observation:
  1. Very expensive gifts ~ very few purchasers.
  2. Higher than average priced gifts ~ purchased by those seeking the greatest social benefit 
  3. Average-priced gifts ~ very few purchasers.
  4. Lower than average priced gifts ~ purchased by those hoping to save money
  5. Very low-priced gifts ~ very few purchasers.
Suggested reading
Click on image
This insight should help anyone who sells gifts in their business or who offers a gift registry service: primarily provide gifts that will appeal to those gift-givers in categories two and four, with a minimum of gift options in categories one, three and five.  Gifts in these "bracket" categories appear to be points of reference for the gift giver who is thinking either I want these people to think well of me and so don’t purchase the most expense gifts nor the least expensive – and also pass on the average priced gifts.

For you, the retailer, it should be obvious that you will reap the best return by investing in inventory that meets the needs of both the people who purchase from category two (somewhat expensive) and four (lower-priced by not cheap) with a minimum of inventory in categories one, three and five, again to provide your customer a point of reference.
*  *  *  *  *

Story Source:  Materials provided by Inderscience Publishers. Yun Kyung Oh, Ye Hu, Xin Wang, William T. Robinson. How do external reference prices influence online gift giving? International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lucrezia Borgia, Entrepreneur

W ho was Lucrezia Borgia?  Tradition has it that she may have poisoned her second husband, Giovanni Sforza.  Rumor of the day had it that Lucretia had incestuous relations with both her father, Rodrigo Borgia, later Pope Alexander VI, and her brother, Cesare Borgia.   What is know for certain is that Lucretia was the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo, then a cardinal of the Catholic Church, and his mistress,  Vannozza dei Cattanei.  It is known that she was married three times, the first being annulled as never being consummated (despite her giving birth a few months after the annulment).  The second marriage ended in the death of her husband, Giovanni, and her third to  Alfonso d'Este, son of the powerful Duke of Ferrera.  This was also to be Alfonso's third marriage, which ended when Lucrezia dies ten days after she gave birth to a stillborn daughter.  She also had affairs (as did her husbands) with several political figures of the day, and even gave birth to the
Post a Comment
Read more

The Seven Characteristics of the Creative Employee.

How to Find Good Employees : On my post of February 18th of this year, we talked about the role of managing stupidity in the success of any organization.  "Stupidity Management" refers to the real need of a business to know the difference between routine tasks that must be completed by rote and those tasks that require innovation and fresh thinking.   Every business has a need for discipline in tasks that must be performed the same way, each and every time. Every business has a need to creative thinking and fresh ideas on certain other tasks or problems, just not every task of problem.   The Hunt for the Creative Individual There are certain jobs in every organization where you, the owner, need original thinking.  Or perhaps you're running a business that lives off original thinkers.  An advertising agency is a business where the company's assets walk out the door every day at five (ish). Professor Øyvind L. Martinsen at BI Norwegian Business School has co
5 comments
Read more

Business should embrace 'boomerang employees'

Source:  themajors.net What should you do when an employee leaves. . . and later asks to return? It may be an emotional instinct to react by rejecting their request to return. But why?  If you take it as a personal rejection when an employee leaves, you may be cutting off your own nose to spite your own face. As these studies from the University of Illinois point out employees leaving then asking to return may just be offering you a big compliment to the way you do things.  Perhaps they thought they'd be better off elsewhere only to find they were well off where they started.  Not a bad message for other employees to hear if nothing else. Boomerang Employees   Organizations of all types are beginning to recognize and embrace the value of recruiting and welcoming back former or boomerang employees. From infantry soldiers to chief executives, accountants and professional basketball players, many organizations proactively recruit and rehire former employees as a way t
3 comments
Read more