Whitepaper
Social Gift Giving with Give Buttons

What is Social Gift Giving?

Social gift giving involves a group of people teaming up to buy a gift for a particular recipient. In contrast, social giving (also called social philanthropy) is where a group of people team up to make donations, or pay for a charitable or philanthropic purpose. For example, a group of people buying a retirement gift for a work colleague is an example of social gift giving, whereas a group of alumni (e.g., the class of 2000) teaming up to pay for a student scholarship at a College is an example of social giving.

Social Gift Giving is a type of social shopping. Social shopping is a somewhat loosely defined topic that has been described (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_shopping) as: "a method of e-commerce where shoppers' friends become involved in the shopping experience." There are a number of categories of social shopping, including recommendation systems that provide advice to fellow shoppers and group buying systems where groups of people (often strangers to each other) buy together in order to get discounted prices. Social gift giving is a kind of social shopping that involves a gift giving community that brings like-minded people together to discuss, share, and shop.

The Promise of Gift Giving Communities

Gift giving communities represent an attractive source of demand generation in social commerce. In many cases gift giving communities are looking for unique or special gifts, and for many groups quality may be just as important as price. Social interactions within gift giving communities can stimulate demand, and conversations about products can provide useful marketing data and opportunities for recommendations.

How can we help gift giving communities to grow and prosper?

We at Vocalage have identified several methods for building a gift giving community, in addition to standard social media tools that are in widespread use for building online communities (cf., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_community).

Organized Catalogues. One of the hardest things for a gift giving community is finding a good, and well organized, set of potential gifts. GiveButtons (www.givebuttons.com) is a gift giving community that was launched by Vocalage in July 2011. GiveButtons currently has hundreds of products (soon to be thousands) organized into categories such as electronics, outdoors, and kids that provide a common interface to attractive products from more than 20 vendors, made available through the Linkshare affiliate network (www.linkshare.com),

Curated Collections. Gift giving is a highly social process and many people find the task of finding a unique and attractive gift to be challenging. Curated collections are an opportunity to see suggestions from expert gift givers. In GiveButtons, each collection has eight products listed in it, organized by a theme that is described in 100 words or less.

An example of a curated collection is the Age of Exploration which was described as folows. "The history books have it wrong, the age of exploration is not the 15th century, when Europeans discovered other people's countries, but 0-12. When kids are learning machines, before all the hormones and responsibilities set in. The tie-died baby reminds me of another age of exploration, the sixties, while the tuxedo onesie is a humorous reminder that we try and make kids grow up too fast. The other items in this collection are all about exploring and imagining in the wonderful time when anything is possible." (The collection images shown below are each available from either Magic Cabin, www.magiccabin.com or Hearthsong www.hearthsong.com, and were accessed through the Linkshare Affiliate Network).

Further examples of curated collections, with there mix of product selections, themes, and philosophies may be found at www.givebuttons.com.

Collaborative Give Buttons. One of the most important functions for social gift giving is a process that allows a group of people to buy a product together. Typically one person will choose a product and then invite friends or colleagues to contribute to it. Collaborative Give Buttons (to be launched on the GiveButtons site in August 2011) are a means to allow a person to click on a Give Button attached to a product and then invite others to purchase that product collaboratively with him or her. GiveButtons can be attached to products hosted in a collaborative gift giving community, or they can be attached to any retailer’s product page and products that are available for collaborative purchase can then be advertised to gift giving communities.

Conclusions

In this white paper we have highlighted collaborative gift giving and curated collections as important ways to facilitate social gift giving within gift giving communities. These methods are being implemented in GiveButtons (www.givebuttons.com) as a leading example of the new breed of gift giving community envisioned in this white paper. While the techniques described in this whitepaper are important advances, they will need to be merged with other social media tools including online discussions, reviews, and recommendations, in order to facilitate the explosive growth in gift giving communities that we anticipate will occur in the next few years.

For more information about GiveButtons, see www.vocalage.com/givebuttons or contact:

Mark Chignell
Vocalage Inc.
151 Bloor St. W., Suite 800
Toronto ON M5S 1S4
CANADA