Jo Allison is Canvas8’s editorial director. She has a background in fashion journalism and 12 years' experience working in b2b publishing. Before heading up the Canvas8 Library team, Jo was an editor at GDR Creative Intelligence, a retail trends consultancy, where she specialised in luxury shopper behaviours.

Ahead of Mother’s Day in the US on the 12th of May 2019, some doting offspring will undoubtedly have spent weeks or months planning lunches out, ordering surprise bouquets, and hand-making photo frames – but for everyone else there was Amazon Prime. The idea that gift-buying for the occasion is a last-minute scramble was picked up by numerous sites, with the likes of 

 all giving advice on how to get seemingly ‘thoughtful’ gifts for moms at the click of a button. But does e-commerce remove the emotion from buying a present?

“Amazon is not particularly inspirational, so I question its value for gifting,” says Glynn Davis, the editor of Retail Insider. “The mass of choice on Amazon makes it even harder to pick gift items. A more curated offer would make things easier.” 

 This risk of ‘choice paralysis’ doesn’t stop people turning to the site – in December 2017, 76% of online shoppers in the US said they’d do most of their holiday shopping on Amazon. 

 They’re drawn to digital retail by the next-day delivery, gift wrap options, and gift receipts. And when it comes to Christmas presents specifically, there are numerous factors putting people off shopping IRL. In the US, 53% of people say crowds and waiting in queues are among the most stressful factors of holiday shopping, while 47% worry about not being able to find the product they want. 

In the UK, 92% of people believe that when it comes to buying presents, it’s the thought that counts, with 77% believing that a gift is an expression of how special someone is. 

 However, Davis suggests that buying online allows people to ‘fake’ being thoughtful. “Online [retail] has fuelled the rise of personalized products – gifts that are easy to buy and look like you’ve thought about it,” he says. 

 Canvas8 spoke to three experts to understand if next-day delivery has turned us into lazy gifters or if, in fact, the ease of e-commerce encourages more expensive, personalized, and thoughtful choices.

Kate Nightingale is a consumer, fashion, and brand psychologist. She lectures in consumer behavior and psychology at the London College of Fashion and is the founder of Style Psychology Ltd, which advises retail and hospitality brands on consumer behavior and how it affects everyday business decisions.

Because we’re living such busy lives, we tend to leave gift buying to the last minute. That usually means stores are closed and we’re too tired to go to them. Amazon is literally Lastminute.com. If you’re a Prime member or are willing to pay a bit extra for delivery, then Amazon is the answer to any purchasing problem. People are starting to treat Amazon as a search engine. It’s a way of streamlining the decision process and also gives recommendations.

Retail decision-making has a lot of steps and in-store they’re made more difficult because there’s no inspiration. There’s no identification of who a product is for or the price level, and they are not merchandised in a way that tells me a story or what kind of person it’s suited for. It’s literally just standing there on a shelf doing nothing. That’s how the majority of stores are and that makes it really hard to make a decision. Online, visual merchandising is done in a way that allows for advice and recommendations, and production descriptions are great, so as a shopper you are informed. You know ‘a guy or a child of this age will like this’. When you go into a physical store, you don’t get the same experience.

The amount of engagement you’re going to put into gift-buying is dependent on your relationship with the person. The deeper the relationship and the more important it is, the more effort you put in, whether that’s time investment or money. The more you’re interdependent on each other, then the more you are going to invest in the gift-buying process.

Because everything can be personalized these days, for it to have meaning, it depends on the style of personalization. If you put someone’s favorite quote that inspires them on a t-shirt, that’s meaningful. But if you bought it in a different color or used a quote that doesn’t mean anything to the recipient, then that’s not meaningful personalization.

Taking the gift receiver through a process of co-creating something is truly memorable. That’s why lots of people are giving experiences. You can’t co-create them fully, but they are things that will always be more valuable than just that a notebook, for example. You can buy those experiences for two people and spend time with the person – that’s giving a real gift. A side-effect of that is that they will become more engaged in a relationship with you. The whole idea of a gift initially was to uphold the relationship, because if you give someone a gift, they need to reciprocate to stay in a relationship with you and you reciprocate when there is an occasion and it keeps going.

Amazon can streamline every annoying part of gift-buying

Aileen Avery is a gift historian, regular TV spokesperson, and author of 

‘Gift Rap: The Art and History of Gift Giving’

Gift-giving is always stressful. There’s extra stress in having to get in your car, go down to the store, look around and come home empty-handed because there isn’t what you wanted or you didn’t have any inspiration – it throws up one more barrier to giving. The more convenient gift-giving is, the better the experience for the person, and the more likely they are to do it.

Amazon is amazing for gifting. If you can think it, you can find it on Amazon. You don’t have to comb through the stores. When you give gifts long-distance, you can send it directly. You even have the option to have it gift wrapped so it doesn’t have to come to you first and you don’t have to go to the post office. Amazon made it really easy and convenient to send gifts to people all over the world. The physical effort that people put into online gift-buying isn’t as much because you’re not driving around, you’re not searching. But the thought is still the same. You’re thinking about this person and you’re thinking that you would like to get the thing that they would really like. That effort is still the same, but it’s more convenient online.

The selection on Amazon means you can buy the exact present you’re thinking of and because Amazon has recommended items, gifters get other ideas too. It’s like ‘virtual browsing’ or ‘virtual window shopping’. It’s ideal for somebody who might not have the time or inclination to drive down to the mall and walk around. With Amazon, you do it in the comfort of your own home and you can find so many more products than what’s on offer in the stores.

The more convenient gift-giving is, the better the experience for the person, and the more likely they are to do it

Shoppers can also create wish-lists. As they’re looking for other things, they might think ‘oh, I wouldn’t buy that for myself’ or ‘I’ll buy that later’ and then you put it on your wish-list. People may then forget about that stuff but someone else can look at your list and surprise you with the thing that you want.

The thoughtful gift will always be the best gift, but teenagers are a really difficult group to buy for because their tastes are always changing. Sometimes a gift card is the best choice, even though it sometimes seems to have no thought to it. The younger generation is also giving more experience-based gifts. They’re not as tied to the physical gift. Making memories with special people is more important – that’s going to be there long after the sweater or the box of candy is forgotten. Giving experiences where you can join in is a really big trend in the US. People still want that feeling of opening something though, and you can still present experiences as a gift that the receiver can ‘unbox’.

Amazon is the go-to for Christmas gift-buying. People have grown accustomed to the convenience and the sheer amount of choice you have. But shopping at stores isn’t dead, because there’s a feeling to it. The malls are decorated, they’re playing music, and you want to go and see Santa Claus. It’s fun. It’s the experience of doing it. You don’t get that online. Buying gifts at Christmas is also about making memories and keeping to tradition. Christmas has a child-like quality, even as an adult. That’s why people like to visit malls, sit and wrap presents while listening to Christmas music – there’s a homey feeling that people don’t want to lose hold of.

Being ‘busy’ is no excuse for not buying a present

Dr. Jason Sit is a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Portsmouth’s Faculty of Business and Law.

Convenience factors into the shopping journey in many ways – research, comparisons, price, product specifications, ordering, and returns. One of the things Amazon has done so successfully is to make it all effortless. It’s a one-stop shopping mall – they offer different suppliers, big and small, national and international, independent and mainstream. And you can shop 24/7. For those who work, they can buy a gift in a lunch break.

You could say buying gifts on Amazon is lazy because it no longer requires us to go anywhere physically. If you see thoughtfulness as physical effort, then it’s made us less thoughtful. But that doesn’t mean the thought or effort is any less. You still have to select the product and compare. You still have to think about what you want, when you want it, and how you will get it. The mental effort is just the same – we’re simply diverting our effort. The fact that we don’t have to travel to a store might mean people spend more time thinking about what to get. There’s the monetary effort too. Most people will have a budget and the fact you can get a good deal on Amazon might mean you can buy more gifts. Amazon also allows people to multi-gift because they don’t pay for delivery. And one of the things about the ease of returning is that people will multi-buy and return what they don’t want.

I don’t think buying presents on Amazon removes the emotional element. Buying something for a partner still involves finding something he or she would like. It doesn’t make me lazy or inconsiderate. Amazon is great because it allows us to do emergency gifting – people forget and Amazon can sort that out with next-day delivery. Life is getting hectic and it’s not that we’re lazy, we’re just dealing with many things at the same time. Amazon, the platform itself, is a means to an end. It doesn’t remove the emotion or effort we’d put into buying gifts.

You still have to think about what you want, when you want it, and how you will get it. The mental effort is just the same – we’re simply diverting our effort

Personalization is a shortcut. Gifting can be a complicated process, especially for Christmas. People find buying for children easy – toys, Marvel, whatever it is. Buying for adults is much more difficult, especially for those who seem like they have everything. Personalization allows us to take a shortcut and show the emotional and mental effort that has gone into the present.

The future could involve everyone giving gift cards. It’s not romantic or symbolic, but does it make us less thoughtful? Probably. But buying the wrong gift can be quite a pain and people have to go through the process of returning it. A gift card doesn’t quantify a relationship. As things progress with algorithms, hopefully Amazon will become more of a solution to ‘bad’ gift buying. For example, you know your partner likes this shape and color, and Amazon might be able to recommend things and could be 90% accurate or some sort of other marker of confidence.

Glynn Davis is a business writer specialising in the retail and food and drink sectors. He is the editor and founder of Retail Insider as well as Beer Insider and co-owns a brewery in North London.

, is founder and CEO of consultancy Style Psychology and a consumer insights expert.

Aileen Avery is a gift historian, regular TV spokesperson, and author of ‘Gift Rap: The Art and History of Gift Giving’.

Dr. Jason Sit is a senior lecturer in marketing at the University of Portsmouth’s Faculty of Business and Law. His specialisms are in customer experience, customer value, and omnichannel retailing, covering various retail or business sectors from shopping centres to DIY to fashion.

Shopping

Online retail

Interview with Gynn Davis conducted by the author

'More than 75 percent of US online consumers shop on Amazon most of the time', CNBC

'Majority of Americans Want to Buy Online and Pick-up In-store to Reduce Holiday Shopping Stress This Year', BusinessWire

'Christmas gift-giving habits revealed', YouGov

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