Politics may influence gift-giving choices more than it influences personal purchases

Political affiliation may not make a difference in everyday purchases for individuals, but it can play a role when buying for friends, family and co-workers, new research from the University of New Hampshire has found. This may have implications for gift-buying this holiday season and beyond.

The study is published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.

“We performed five different studies, each looking at buying different products, and asked people to make a choice for themselves and then a gift for someone they knew really well and found that politics played a bigger role when people were purchasing gifts, because that’s a case where people are making a decision based on how they think others feel,” said Justin Pomerance, assistant professor of marketing at UNH’s Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics and lead author.

In their paper, Pomerance and his co-author, Leaf Van Boven, professor of psychology at the University of Colorado, showed how political party played a bigger role than type of product.

In a series of five studies, online participants and college students were asked a series of purchasing questions. In their first study, participants were asked to create music playlists for themselves and another person. When choosing for themselves, only 58% of the songs they chose for themselves came from artists who aligned with their political ideology. However, when making a playlist for someone else, that number increased to 64% of the songs matching their target’s political leanings.

A similar pattern emerged when participants chose paintings for others, favoring politically aligned art for others more than for themselves.

In the series of studies, choices ranged from selecting songs and paintings, to predicting how much others would enjoy experiences versus material goods. All focused on how political cues—like product labeling or the political views of a specific artist—impacted consumer preferences when buying for others.

Each study revealed a similar pattern, with participants consistently putting more weight on how much others cared about politics, even in one of the studies where the product information was ambiguous. Even though images of paintings were blurred, 61% of participants chose politically aligned items for others compared to only 54% for themselves.

To take it a step further, researchers also compared political cues to other identity markers like gender and race, telling participants that the major donor of a museum was either conservative, liberal or identified by gender or minority status. The results revealed that political cues had a stronger effect on participants’ perceptions than either gender or race.

“There are a few reasons for this,” said Pomerance. “For one, it seems more socially acceptable to like or dislike people based on politics than on race or gender. Political identity feels more like a choice and more reflective of personal preferences.”

The researchers say these findings lend further evidence to earlier research and have important implications for businesses, because while companies may believe that taking a political stand or sending political signals will significantly influence their customers’ purchasing decisions, the research suggests otherwise. However, understanding judgments by consumers is important because people frequently make purchases for others, such as co-workers, friends, family and others in their community.

They believe this research could offer a silver lining—while polarization may dominate political discussions, it shows that most people are not constantly thinking about it when making consumer decisions.