I'm not very good at wrapping gifts. I can't tie a decent bow with a ribbon to save my soul and the art of neatly folding wrapping paper around gifts has largely escaped me. If it's an odd shape, I find myself reduced to wrapping tissue around it. Needless to say that gifts from me generally stand out under the tree. No need for a "from" label.
So it was that I was heartened by the latest research on gift wrapping. The bottom line is don't bother.
According to this report by Bob Moon (no not that Bob Moon) on Marketplace, "test subjects who got presents tied up in brown paper were actually happier than they were with flashy packaging. And you might just want to skip the wrapping altogether.”
This was the conclusion drawn by Nathan Novemsky, a marketing professor “at Yale University
It’s all about managing expectations.
“…you can imagine that -- especially as a gift that's wrapped sits under the Christmas tree for, you know, days or weeks, for example -- you start to imagine what's in there and you get pretty expectations. And when Christmas finally comes or the time comes to finally open that wrapping, you're imagining something great. Where as if I just say, "Here is something for you" and hand you something that you can immediately see, there's no chance for those expectations to creep up.”
Kind of like that little box that sort of looks like a jewelry box but ends up being a wine stopper.
“Oh, just what I wanted…”
