Promoting business with corporate gifts – major issues and empirical evidence

Corporate gifts are an important tool in the marketing communication mix. This paper is divided into two parts. It first reviews the literature of corporate gifts and incentives, focusing on major issues in the use of corporate gifts: marketing issues, practical considerations, and ethical and cultural concerns. In the second part, it presents a survey in the UK airline industry. Corporate gifts are found to be used mainly as a means of enhancing corporate image and creating goodwill. They are also used to help reinforce other elements in the marketing communication mix such as advertising and sales promotion.