Personal Values and Gift Giving: The Case of Choosing a Restaurant for Hosting Dinner

Learning on how people choosing a product or service remains an attractive topic for marketers for ages; nonetheless, how people utilize their cognitive structure when selecting products or services might be even more interesting. In this study, the cognitive structure of consumers was examined when choosing a restaurant for hosting dinner for their friends or family-members. Consumers’ cognitive structure in this study could be seen as the structure of Gift Giving Behaviour (GGB) because choosing a restaurant for others could be seen as gifting. From the literatures of GGB, the eight factors were achieved as the GGB structure: Attitude toward Behaviour (AB), Subjective Norm (SN), Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC), Self-Identity toward Other (SIO), Self-Identity toward Self (SIS), Anticipated Emotion (AE), Purchase-Decision Involvement (PDI) and Symbolic of Gift (SG). Additionally, Personal Value (PV) which has been founded as an influencer for GGB also included in this study as the antecedent of GGB structure. Accordingly, this study aims to explain the relationship between Personal Value (PV) and Gift Giving Behaviour (GGB). Hosting a dinner for the closed relationship such as friend and family member is employed as a context for this study, so as to restrict GGB for intangible gift, occasional gifting, and with closed relationship. Kahle’s List of Value (LOV) was utilized as PVs construct such as Warm Relationship with Others (WR), Self Respect (SR), Self Fulfilment (SF), Sense of Accomplishment (SA), Fun and Enjoyment (FE), Sense of Belonging (SB), Being Well-Respected (BR), Security (SC), and Excitement (EC). Since GGB is one of voluntary behavior which directly related to Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), some criteria from TPB were in cooperated. Thus GGB construct consists of nine criteria which three factors were extracted from GGB such as Motivation of GGB (MG), Gift-Selection Effort (GE), Information Searching (IS) and six factors of TPB were included such as Attitude toward Behaviour (AB), Subjective Norm (SN), Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC), Intensity of intention (II), Self-Identity (SI), and Anticipated Emotion (AE). The total of 638 respondents from web-based survey was captured in Australia. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied as a tool for analysis the data. Regard to the AMOS output, the final model of six PVs and eight GGB factors was accepted. The six PVs were Warm Relationship with Others (WR), Sense of Accomplishment (SA), Sense of Belonging (SB), Being Well-Respected (BR), Security (SC), and Excitement (EC). The eight factors of GGB construct were Attitude toward Behaviour (AB), Subjective Norm (SN), Perceived Behavioural Control (PBC), Self-Identity toward Other (SIO), Self-Identity toward Self (SIS), Purchase-Decision Involvement (PDI) and Symbolic of Gift (SG).The results confirmed the previous study of Beatty, Kahle, and Homer in 1991 that the PVs has influence on GGB. Also it elaborated how each PVs affect differently on each factor of GGB construct. For example, people who held two PVs such as Warm Relationship to Others (WR) and Excitement (EC) as their primary PV tend to choose a gift utilizing Attitude toward Behaviour (AB) more than the others. This study contributes to both theoretical and managerial perspectives. The relationship of each PVs and each factor of GGB was drawn. As well as the GGB construct was proposed. For marketing managers, the PV-based segmentation could be used for better understanding customers and planning marketing strategy in gift market.