There’s a science to buying the perfect gift—literally. According to research, a good gift is useful and high-quality. “When a giver chooses a highly desirable gift, he or she is hoping that the recipient will be dazzled upon opening it,” writes Jeff Galak, Associate Professor of Marketing at Carnegie Mellon University‘s Tepper School of Business and of Social and Decision Sciences at the Dietrich College of Humanities. “In contrast, recipients care greatly about their ability to use or enjoy the gift and prefer more feasible or useful gifts. In other words, givers choose desirable but not feasible gifts because they seem likely to be more appreciated during the gift exchange. However, the recipient is likely to be less satisfied in the end with a gift whose value is hard to extract.”

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