Studies have been conducted to investigate gift customization and an article published in Hal open science about vicarious pride – is very interesting. 

The authors are cited in the article from Psychology & Marketing 2024. This can be seen on Wiley Online Library published in May 2024. 

This article indicated which found that recipients of personalized gifts experience various pride, which means significant emotional appreciation. 

In the studies done it has been discovered that the person getting a customized gift appreciate the gifts more highly because they feel feelings of pride. This has been termed ‘vicarious pride’.

Experiments have been done with real life friends to test this.

Approximately 50% of customers are reported to be interested in self customizing products for gifting.

This is how the gifts are made special over another commoditised gift.

The market for customized gifts which includes photo personalization, embroidery personalization is set to grown to $13,011.27 million by 2027 reported in Yahoo Finance. 

Once a customer is involved in the process ie ‘’I designed this myself’’ this increases the value of the customized products for the customer.

Interestingly with the results of these studies it has been found the Gift Giver has feelings of pride when receiving a customized gift, even thought they didn’t help create it.

This experience of pride for the gift recipient is another example where people can be prideful of something they do not have direct involvement in creating – like a sports team supported who is joyous when the team they are not playing in wins.

So, the research finds we can feel feelings of achievement not just from our own achievement but also from anothers achievement. This feels true anyhow but is so interesting the research bears this out also.

Gift exchanging increased connectness, reinforces relational bonds.

Customized gifts have been found to be perceived as more appreciated than non-customized gifts due to this vicarious pride.

The literature has also suggested feelings of self esteem being increased, empowerment being increased as a consequence of this feeling of pride.

As the customized gift increases a state of self esteem, the gift is more appreciated in essence. They dig deep these personalized gifts in our emotions.

Four studies took place to test this whole hypothesis ie customized gifts generate feelings of vicarious pride in the gift recipient.

The first and second studies involved real life couples of friends.

Studies three and four concerned participants from prolific academic and used scenario experiments.

Gifts that are centered on the recipient elicit positive emotions, have the power to reinforce the relationship between them.

The findings provided support for the contention that gift customization creates feelings of pride, does have an effect on gift appreciation.

The findings showed that time and effort spent on customizing the gift for the gift giver didn’t seem to effect the various pride on gift appreciation interestingly. This seems to tie in with the idea of it’s the gesture that counts, it’s the thought and effort that counts. The gift recipient doesn’t need the gift giver to go to the moon so to speak with effort, but instead to just having made the effort is enough to elicit feelings of appreciation and happiness.

The studies found that customization offers benefits to Gift Recipients who are not involved in the gifts customization process.

Gift customization generate ‘vicarious pride’ this means the gift recipient experiences the same mental sate the customer who bought the product does after product customization.

The pride factor from the gift recipients perspective comes from knowing the source ie who gave them the gift. So active participation by the person in the customization process is not needed, just the awareness of such customization having taken place can generate the increase in appreciation for the gift recipient.

It is this vicarious pride that has the effect of the gift recipients appreciating customized gifts more so than non-customized gifts.

We knew all along that the Gift Giver gets massive value out of giving a personalized gift. We felt it. We saw it. We knew it. It reinforced bonds between people, it showed one person making the effort to make another happy. It showed one person knows the other person very well. They get them and they love. This alone would make one feel appreciated.

But here we have the data or science behind it now to explain it in a scientific way we have touched on here.

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Cloncaia Bio 

At Cloncaia we turn everyday objects into meaningful, personalized gifts for family members, friends and for any loved one of our customer. Our motto is ''show the love'' so we apply this to the products creation process by turning Photos, Names, Custom Messages, Portrait drawings into gifts with heart & style for our customers. 

Author: Roger J. is the author of this blog and founder of Cloncaia. He believes the best gifts come form the heart and which pack an emotional punch. At Cloncaia we are inspired to create gifts that have meaning and make our customers happy. 

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Important Note : 

At Cloncaia, we are an ethical company and have clear shipping, return, refund policies. Our designers and production team have many years of experience, act professionally and with care when custom designing and fulling orders.

We can be contacted on support@cloncaia.com

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Written by Cloncaia — creators of custom gifts for heartfelt moments