Abstract
To measure the effectiveness of business gifts, a controlled field experiment was designed to isolate the attitudinal and behavioral intent effects of business gift giving by an actual company and its customers. Customers were randomly assigned to experimental groups (who received a business card file) and control groups (who received no business gift) according to a Solomon four-group design. Mail questionnaires were utilized to collect data on respondent attitudes toward four product attributes (price, quality, service, and delivery) across three product lines, and on customers' likelihood to contact the donor company versus the majority of its major competitors. Consistent with the reciprocal intent of business gift giving, the results indicate the ability of business gifts to work in synergy with the other elements of an organization's marketing communications program.
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