Latest / Behavioral Economics with Fexingo: Decision Making, Bias, and How People Really Spend
Why Your Brain Treats a Cash Gift Differently Than a Gift Card
In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore the mental accounting gap between cash and gift cards. Drawing on a 2023 study from the Journal of Marketing Research, they discuss why recipients often treat a $50 bill as 'free money' to be saved or spent frivolously, while a $50 gift card is mentally earmarked for a specific purchase. They cover the concept of 'fungibility' (or lack thereof), the 'mental accounting' framework by Richard Thaler, and a real-world experiment where consumers given cash versus gift cards at a grocery store spent 23% more when using the gift…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.