Gifts received with the purchase of a focal product are widely used as a tool aimed at incentivizing sales. Yet, marketers still face many questions related to the effectiveness of this promotional technique. In this paper, we examine whether customer's gender—a variable that is managerially relevant and often collected for targeting and positioning purposes—influences the success of gift promotions. Using novel data from a car rental company, we show that promotional gifts have a stronger positive impact on subsequent purchase behaviors for women (vs. men). Two follow‐up experiments demonstrate that this gender effect is driven by the fact that women obtain greater transactional value from the promotional purchase than men do, leading to enhanced reciprocity motivation among women. Taken together, these findings first argue for a more targeted use of promotions involving gifts and second, raise questions about whether we should carefully consider potential gender differences in predicting the effects of many common marketing tactics that are presently discussed as if universal.

中文翻译：

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消费者对促销礼品的反应：性别，交易价值和互惠的作用

购买重点产品后收到的礼物被广泛用作激励销售的工具。然而，营销人员仍然面临许多与此促销技术的有效性有关的问题。在本文中，我们检查了客户的性别（在管理上相关且通常用于目标定位和定位的变量）是否影响礼品促销的成功。使用来自汽车租赁公司的新数据，我们显示促销礼品对女性（相对于男性）的后续购买行为具有更强的积极影响。两个后续实验表明，这种性别效应是由以下事实驱动的：女性通过促销购买获得的交易价值高于男性，从而导致女性之间的互惠动机增强。在一起