Exploring the effectiveness of business gifts: Replication and extension
Author: Journal of Advertising

This investigation replicates Beltramini's (1992) study of the effectiveness of business gifts, and extends the research to include actual marketplace sales response. A company's customers' perceived satisfaction and intention to continue repurchasing are surveyed both before and after being sent a more expensive gift, a less expensive gift, or no gift at all, and customers' actual sales are longitudinally tracked. The results indicate business gift-giving represents an effective part of a marketer's overall marketing communications strategy, and both limitations and implications are discussed.

Business gifts provide a token of appreciation for past business and underscore the giver's desire to maintain established customer relationships. Although widely used today, very little is known about their effectiveness. In a controlled field experiment, Beltramini (1992) found business gifts to be generally effective in increasing customers' positive perceptions toward products, yet somewhat less so in increasing their reported likelihood of actually contacting the gift-giving business to purchase the products tested. However directive, it was still not possible to directly link the giving of business gifts to actual marketplace behavior (i.e., sales), yet obviously such results represent a far more ideal result to both researchers and practitioners in this area.

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