When is a gift not a gift?
When it’s unwelcome of course!
And that’s the warning that western marketers should take heed of.

In the western commercial world, marketers often use pleasant surprises to influence consumers’ brand evaluations and purchasing decisions, but surprises are not always held to be pleaurable in some cultures. Marketing across cultures is a minefield and anyone in this line of business should be wary of different cultural responses to promotional gifts, especially the unexpected ones.

 However nice the gift may be, the surprise element can make some recipients feel uneasy – and its nothing to do with thoughts of bribery and corruption. East Asians genuinely feel their emotional balance has been disrupted because an unexpected gift indicates imbalance and prophesises bad fortune. People in the Nordic countries tend to feel suspicious. Americans, on the other hand, are delighted.

A new cross-cultural study of consumer response has recently been published which suggests that East Asians’ enjoyment of  ‘surprise’ gifts is much increased  when the gift is attiributable to luck.  So, for example, it is far more acceptable to have consumers enter a “Lucky Game” to win the gift. Undoubtedly, marketing activities across borders must accomodate cross-cultural differences.

 About the study: Ana Valenzuela, Barbara Mellers, and Judi Strebel. “Pleasurable Surprises: A Cross-Cultural Study of Consumer Responses to Unexpected Incentives.” Journal of Consumer Research: February 2010 (published online July 15, 2009).The authors conducted four studies in which participants received a gift as a token of appreciation for participating in a survey. Some of the participants knew about the gifts before participating, while others were surprised.