Embeddedness In Action: The Socio-Cultural Institution Of Gift Giving As a Resource In Consumer Markets

Social embeddedness is often presented in the research literature as framing economic action, and socio-cultural institutions are portrayed as influencing the preference function of markets actors, rather than as a flexible resource in the actual process of economic exchange. But what happens when institutions become an interactive part of economic action? By focusing and analyzing the context and content of daily sales encounters in a computer chain store in Tel-Aviv, Israel, this study presents how and when sellers and buyers mobilize the socio-cultural institution of gifting to further their diverse socio-economic interests as they buy and sell goods. The article divides the empirical manifestations of the socio-cultural institution of gift giving into three phases of the sales process: Pre-sale gifting, closing gifts and post-sale gifting. In each case the distinct mobilization of gift giving is described and analyzed as part of the interactive sales encounter. Discussion centers on the flexibility of gift giving as it becomes a resource in economic transaction, and on the more general claim that the notion of social embeddedness of economic action can be strengthened by examining the mobilization of socio-cultural institutions in action, that is as part of interactive sales encounters.