Happiness: Corporate Gifting and Satisfaction in life

P eople have and will continue to view happiness as a universal emotion we all have experiences that encompass a mixture of joy, excitement, and bliss. Ideas and concepts on how to achieve and what happiness is have been around for centuries. Theories around life satisfaction have identified happiness as having a favorable attitude towards life (Haybron, 2020). Two senses of happiness have been theorized, one is a state of mind and the other is a life that goes well for the one that is leading it. Both these senses of happiness are promoted through healthy workplaces and healthy lifestyles.

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Workplaces play a large role in our daily lives and can be the cause of our happiness and downfall. Ways to promote happiness and satisfaction in life are essential to workers’ mental health and mentality. Corporate gifting is a way for large companies to show their workers appreciation and bring some happiness to their lives. This can also bring forward a better work ethic and create This begs my research question “How can corporate gift giving be improved to help satisfaction with life for workers?” In past studies using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) have found correlations between the ability to handle daily demands and satisfaction with life and also, and studies that have shown correlated between enjoyment of the workplace and satisfaction with life. The data collected from the survey offer insight into Canadian mental health and more specifically certain variables look into happiness. My research begs a few different variables that go into gift-giving. The first variable is the timing of gifts, whether corporate gifting has a larger effect around the holiday or on spontaneous days, This plays a large role in the importance of timing with gift-giving and how it can be used to promote happiness. The second variable is the type of gift, the type of gift for the occasion may affect the level of happiness one experiences after receiving a gift. From small things like candles and personalized water bottles to larger items like new computers and big gift receipts to different locations.

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Research

For this research, I looked at past research done and compiled together information that might inform on corporate gift-giving and happiness. As stated data from the CCHS has shown correlations between satisfaction with life and workplace satisfaction. This correlation suggests a relationship between these variables. The first research looked at was done in the “Advances in Consumer Research” volume 42. The researcher Joseph Goodman had researched whether material or experimental gift-giving had a greater impact on happiness. This study found a lot of interesting information that can be applied to a larger scale. Although almost everyone has experience in both being the gifter and giftee, people are unable to apply information from one role to the other. The results of the study supported that experimental gift-giving was better yet gift-givers tend to stick to more material gifts. Both of these aspects can come into play in corporations and can offer insight into how corporate gift giving may change in order to produce the highest amount of happiness from employees.

Another study done in “The Journal of Consumer Research” looked into how feasibility plays a large role in gift receivers more than gift-givers. In this study, it has been found that gifters do not always choose gifts that maximize receiver happiness or relationship goals even though the receiver believes they are. Receives can be sensitive to relationships between them and the receiver but gifting can break that sensitivity and gifts can have ulterior motives without the receiver being in the know. Although in corporations you may not know everyone who is receiving the gift it can still create an impact with receivers. Now it is important to consider cultural differences when it comes to gift-giving. In a study done by Park, Korean and American gift-giving behaviors. The diverse multicultural behavior of consumers can be drastically different. This study aimed to illustrate key behavior differences between Americans and western-centric cultures and the nature of Eastern-centric people. Throughout in-depth interviews, there were many factors that influenced this difference in gift-giving behaviors. A large variable was the difference in collectivistic and individualistic values of each culture. With corporations trying to reflect the diversity we see in our country it is important to see the cultural differences and acknowledge them in gift-giving.