While gift-givers typically wrap gifts prior to presenting them, little is known about the effect of how the gift is wrapped on recipients' expectations and attitudes toward the gift inside. We propose that when recipients open a gift from a friend, they like it less when the giver has wrapped it neatly as opposed to sloppily and we draw on expectation disconfirmation theory to explain the effect. Specifically, recipients set higher (lower) expectations for neatly (sloppily)-wrapped gifts, making it harder (easier) for the gifts to meet these expectations, resulting in contrast effects that lead to less (more) positive attitudes toward the gifts once unwrapped. However, when the gift-giver is an acquaintance, there is ambiguity in the relationship status and wrapping neatness serves as a cue about the relationship rather than the gift itself. This leads to assimilation effects where the recipient likes the gift more when neatly wrapped. We assess these effects across three studies and find that they hold for desirable, neutral, and undesirable gifts, as well as with both hypothetical and real gifts.

The authors introduce emotional ability similarity to explain consumer satisfaction in interactions with frontline sales and service employees and other consumers beyond the effects of traditional relational variables in the similarity–attraction paradigm. Four studies examine how and why similar abilities for using emotional information between two people promote relational success in marketplace exchanges. We find that, when interacting with others, consumers who exchange nonverbal information with their partners experience (dis)similarity in their emotional ability (EA). Similar dyads who rely on expressive (high–high EA pairs) or inexpressive (low–low EA pairs) emotion norms experience significantly greater satisfaction in their interactions than consumers with dissimilar norms (high–low EA pairs). Together, these findings advance the understanding of consumer relationships and satisfaction by establishing EA similarity as a new avenue for consumer research.

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