Over the holiday season, many families and friend groups engage in gift-giving. Be it for a tradition or an event among peers, the idea of exchanging presents has become a common practice in our country and something a lot of us look forward to over the holidays. However, due to the high expectations and large amount of people to buy presents for, many Americans find themselves in debt at the end of the season.
On this special roundtable episode of RadioEd, Matt and Emma chat with University of Denver’s professors Ali Besharat and Melissa Akaka about gift-giving in America and how different cultures approach the process of giving and receiving presents. In addition, they discuss layaway financing and other buy now, pay later methods that have emerged and their potential benefits and downsides as we approach the holidays.
Melissa Akaka is an associate professor, director, Master of Science in Marketing, and Co-Director at Consumer Insights and Business Innovation Center in the marketing department of the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. She is the Elizabeth and Ali Machado Faculty Fellow and teaches topics such as marketing research, introduction to marketing, customer experience design, and collaborative innovation. Her research investigates the cocreation of value in consumer cultures and consumption experiences as well as collaborative innovation and entrepreneurship in dynamic service ecosystems. Akaka’s scholarly work has been published in a variety of academic journals, including the Journal of Service Research, the Journal of International Marketing, and Industrial Marketing Management. Her work was recently recognized for being “highly cited” (in the top 1%) by Thompson and Reuters.
Ali Besharat is an associate professor and the Co-Director at the Consumer Insights and Business Innovation Center in the marketing department of the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. He has received numerous college-wide and university-wide fellowships and research and teaching awards. He has been featured in New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNBC, Time, CNN, Business Insider, Denver Post, Colorado Public Radio, Denver Business Journal, and Business Observer, among many other popular media sources. He teaches courses in consumer behavior, marketing research, introduction to marketing, marketing management, and IMC. His areas of research interest within consumer behavior include behavioral judgment and decision-making and marketing communications and branding. He currently serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Retailing, the European Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research.
Original source can be found here.
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