Holiday Mini-sode: How To Avoid These 3 Gift-Buying Mistakes

My name is Kristen Berman. I'm a behavioral scientist and host of the podcast the Science of Change. As a behavioral scientist, I study the mistakes that people make with their decisions. It's the holiday season. What is the ultimate holiday decision that we get to make? It's what gifts to buy for our friends and family. And so here are three of the top mistakes that I see people making with gift buying and hopefully the recommendations that you can use in your next gift buy. So first, it's not a money transfer. You're not paying off people to be your friends or family. I think the goal of a gift is to improve the relationship with the person you're giving the gift to. So if you actually take that and play that out, what would it look like? It wouldn't look like a gift card. It may look like giving somebody the gift of your time. This could be a ticket to a baseball game or a ticket to a play. It's really about spending more time with them to improve the relationship. And by the way, this is probably cheaper than a gift card or other things you could give them. So the first thing is buy a gift that will increase the likelihood that you can connect in the future. The second recommendation is I think that people are too conservative with gifts. If they can buy it themselves, what's the point of a gift? The point of a gift is to actually help them maybe go out of their comfort zone. Can you be a bit riskier? So instead of getting them that gift card to Target, could you actually go and buy them a piece of clothing that you think they may like but not buy for themselves? They can always return it. Most stores have return policies that are pretty viable, especially around the holidays. So ditch the flowers, ditch the wine, and be a little bit riskier and give them something that they may not buy for themselves. Okay. And the third one, which is a little bit more bold, is to help them remember you when you're not there. So a gift in general could be put in their living room or their kitchen, and they could look at it every day and think fondly of you when they do. So you can buy a gift in order to help increase. You know, the first thing we said was improve the relationship, increase connection. And a gift that is visible and people see frequently could actually help that happen. So imagine a pen that they use every day, or a toaster that goes on their counter or knives that they use. At this point, they're looking at that and thinking of you. So those are the top three mistakes not to make with gift buying. Oh, and one last mistake that you could make, but I hope you don't, is to not listen to the Science of Change in the New year. So the Science of Change is a podcast. I'm the host of that podcast, and it really deep dives into the psychologies of people, users, customers. And if you liked hearing about the mistakes of gift buying, I can almost guarantee that you'll love the upcoming episodes for the Science of Change. So give yourself the holiday gift of subscribing, liking, following the Science of Change on any podcast platform that you listen to. Sam.