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The gift instinct: Why luxury packaging is hardwired into human emotion
When the Voyager spacecraft were sent on a mission to explore alien worlds billions of miles away, each included what then-US President Jimmy Carter called “a present from a small distant world” – a golden record containing images and sounds from Earth.
By Paul Hamilton, head of sales & marketing at Hunter Luxur W
businesses, this
immutable fact of human existence means that developing products designed for gifting can be highly profitable and competitive. And increasingly, packaging is key to succeeding in this crowded marketplace.
hen faced with the possibility of making first contact with alien life, the first thing we did was send it a present. And while
this particular gift may never be received, gift-giving remains one of the few truly universal social activities that has remained constant throughout human history. We give gifts for many reasons – to celebrate, to console, to express appreciation, to fulfil social obligations and to nurture relationships.
Our innate human drive to give gifts has persisted for thousands of years and is as strong as ever today. The average UK adult now purchases 32 gifts each year, spending over £400 in total. For
TAPPING INTO THE IMAGINATION Part of the reason gift-giving has remained central to so many cultures throughout history is that both the gift-giver and receiver benefit. Studies have shown that both parties get a hit of feel-good hormones like oxytocin and dopamine when a gift is exchanged. Just
thinking about giving a gift can have the same effect, lighting up the reward pathways in the brain that make us feel more socially connected.
For brands, the task is simple to describe but challenging to execute – develop a pack that the consumer can imagine themselves giving as a gift when they see it on the shelf. Packaging is absolutely central to achieving this effect.
As the first point of contact between the consumer and the product, packaging has a hugely important psychological role in any product purchase, especially in luxury packaging, and even more especially in gift giving. There is a reason we often add symbolic extra layers of packaging by hand when wrapping gifts. A thin layer of paper or ribbon wrapped around a birthday present has no functional purpose – it doesn’t protect or preserve its contents – but from an emotional standpoint, it is invaluable. Packaging is also a canvas for emotional storytelling that can sway purchasing decisions. As gift-giving is an intensely emotion-driven instinct, packaging design must tap into that emotion by giving the
30
February 2026
www.convertermag.com
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