The Influence Of Social Distance On The Choice Of Gift Type

China,as a state of etiquette,has been paying attention to etiquette since ancient times.Here "Li" not only refers to the etiquette,but also includes the meaning of "gift".Gift-giving is very common and important in interpersonal communication.People express their feelings or expectations for the recipient by giving gifts.With the progress of the times,great changes have taken place in people’s lives.Along with this change,people’s demand for gifts is increasing,and so are their demands for gifts.In the pace of social progress and the expansion of people’s needs,the connotation and extension of gifts have also been expanded,from tangible to intangible,from material to immaterial changes.A gift is no longer just an item given to the recipient,it can be a membership service for a club or a food trip.According to the change from tangible to intangible gifts,gifts are divided into material gifts and experiential gifts.Material gifts are items(such as jewelry or electronic devices)that can be owned and permanently preserved by the recipient,and experiential gifts are events that can be experienced by the recipient(such as concert tickets or VIP card).For gift merchants,the increase of consumers’ demand for gifts and the diversification of gift types are both opportunities and challenges.Timely and accurate grasp of consumers’ preference for gifts is one of the key factors to gain an advantage in the highly competitive gift market.By reviewing and combing the relevant literature on gift-giving behavior,we find that in the research on gift-giving behavior,a lot of literature focuses on gift giving purposes,gift giving motivation,or romantic gifts and intimate relationships.At present,there are only a few studies on experiential gifts and material gifts.Among them,scholars Goodman and Lim(2017)studied the impact of social distance on the choice of experiential gifts and material gifts from the perspective of avoiding mistakes.However,interpersonal relationship needs were not considered in this study,and the choice of gift types by gift givers with different relationship norms was not involved in this study.In addition,we tried to conduct interviews with a small group and found that for recipients with different social distances from themselves,people’s choice of experiential gifts and material gifts was different from the former research.We try to explore the causes of this difference,by combing a large amount of literature about gift giving behavior,gift giving motivation and interpersonal relationships,we find that gift giving behaviors are often linked to relationships,andpeople under different relationship norms often show different behaviors when facing the same situation.Therefore,this paper takes social distance as the independent variable,gift type selection as the dependent variable,relationship strength improvement motivation as the mediation,and relationship norms as the moderating variable to build a model for research.In addition,the research design and data collection are carried out by the experiment method and the questionnaire method,and SPSS20.0 software was used to analyze the data and verify the research hypothesis.In this paper,three experiments were carried out and the following conclusions were drawn.Firstly,when the social distance with the recipient is far away,the giver is more inclined to give experiential gifts;when the social distance with the recipient is close,the giver is more inclined to give material gifts.Secondly,the relationship strength improvement motivation plays a mediating role in the above-mentioned influence process.Specifically,when the social distance with the recipient is far away,the giver will have a stronger relationship strength improvement motivation,and then tend to give experiential gifts;when the social distance with the recipient is closer,the motivation for improving the strength of the relationship is weak,and it tends to give material gifts.Thirdly,relationship norms play a moderating role.When the gift giver is in the exchange relationship norm,compared with the close social distance,when the social distance between the gift giver and the recipient is far away,the gift giver tends to give experiential gifts.When the giver is in the communal relationship norm,and the social distance with the recipient is far or near,there is no significant difference in their preference for gift type selection.The research conclusion of this paper makes a beneficial supplement to the research on the selection preference of experiential gifts and material gifts,contribute referential theoretical results to the research on gift-giving industry,and enriches the research content.And innovatively defined the relationship strength improvement motivation.At the same time,it also provides guidance to gift manufacturers and merchants.