it’s NOT the thought that counts

Can't Buy Me Love... Or Can You?
by Laura Rowley

Apparently, it's not the thought that counts.

According to survey conducted by Yahoo! Finance, 80 percent of Americans expect their significant other to buy them something to celebrate a special occasion like Valentine's Day.

Love Isn't Cheap

Of that group, a quarter of recipients expected their partner to spend up to $50; a third anticipated spending between $50 and $150; and a quarter looked for a gift of more than $150. Less than a third of all respondents said the price didn't matter "because it's the thought that counts."

If money can't buy you love, it may purchase a little affection. Nearly half of the respondents said they feel more affectionate, at least some of the time, after receiving a gift they assume to be expensive.

Moreover, the National Retail Federation says 63 percent of consumers will celebrate Valentine's Day, and overall spending is expected to reach nearly $17 billion.

Sentimental Value Is Truly Valuable

Is this yet another carnival of materialism, just when many people are settling the credit card bills from the last big holiday? Why aren't loved ones looking for the free yet lovingly composed string of romantic verse or off-key serenade on an acoustic guitar?

According to research, it has to do with the heavy emotional investment people attach to gifts from their loved one. At least one study found that even when they're told to ignore the sentimental aspects, people put a higher monetary value on an item that's given as a present.

Sara Solnick, an economist at the University of Vermont, and David Hemenway, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, asked consumers to write down a list of gifts they'd received. They then randomly chose one of the gifts, and then asked, "Aside from any sentimental value, if, without the giver ever knowing, you could receive an amount of money instead of the gift, what is the minimum amount of money that would make you equally happy?"

"On average people valued the gift at twice the actual cost," says Solnick, whose research was published in the American Economic Review. "People didn't know how to avoid sentimental value. When we asked them if the gift did have a sentimental value, they valued it even more compared to the price."

Quantifying Affection

When asked why they valued the gift (more than one answer was allowed):
• 50 percent of recipients said it showed a lot of thought
• 50 percent said it was something they wanted but thought they shouldn't spend the money on for themselves
• 22 percent said it was something they needed or wanted but never had time to get
• 20 percent said they wouldn't have wanted to shop for the gift
• 18 percent said they liked the taste of the gift-giver better than their own taste.

A charitable 19 percent said it was "not something they would have picked but they may grow to like it."

For better or worse, people tend to view material gifts as a physical manifestation of their partner's feelings. When asked, "Do you feel that the amount of money your significant other spends on you communicates how he or she feels about you?" a whopping 40 percent of respondents in the Yahoo! Finance survey agreed that it does, at least some of the time.

Meanwhile, more than three-quarters of givers said they bestow gifts on loved ones to show affection. (An unromantic quarter said they did it because they "were supposed to.")

"People are always hammering home ‘it's the thought that counts,' but if everyone accepted that you wouldn't have to say it," says Solnick. "There's something basic within people, an impulse that wants to quantify [affection] somehow."

Partner X

Unfortunately, buying just the right token of your love remains a challenge. According to a recent study in the Journal for Consumer Research, the better you know your partner, the worse your chances of finding a gift they actually want.

The study looked at couples who were in relationships for at least six months. Researchers in the Netherlands and Belgium put them in separate cubicles, where they viewed different sets of furniture on a computer and were asked to provide their own opinion.

They were then asked what they thought their partners would like, and what they thought a complete stranger -- "Person X" -- would prefer based on some information given about the stranger. Unbeknown to the participants, Person X was their partner, too.

The couples were better at choosing furniture for someone they thought was a total stranger. Intimacy is to blame: We tend to mix in stuff about ourselves with information about our partners, or, as the researchers said, "familiarity results in assumptions about similarity."

We also tend to know a ton of detail about someone we love, and that massive storehouse of data (which has nothing to do with furniture preferences) can throw us off.

The Best Gifts Are Unexpected

The bottom line here, guys: Ask the clerk in the lingerie store for help, quickly. Men are the big spenders on Valentine's Day, averaging $156 compared to $85 for women, according to the National Retail Federation. Some 58 percent of men will buy flowers, 53 percent plan an evening out, and 28 percent said they'll buy a little bling.

But if you really want to wow your loved one, figure out how to surprise them. In the study by Solnick and Hemenway, consumers put an even higher yield on a gift they didn't expect to receive.

"Maybe you can say, ‘Valentine's Day isn't important, let's not do anything this year' and then give them something," Solnick suggests. "Because if it's routine, the feeling is, ‘check, they got me the flowers again.' As a giver you want to have element of surprise."