E24: Gift Giving Research | Farnoush Reshadi | The Business School

Jon Cain: The holiday season is here and you're probably thinking about gifts, what to give and who to give to. Don't worry. The WPI Podcast is here to help. Today you'll learn why gift givers and gift recipients are sometimes on different pages and what the research says so you can become a better gift giver.  Hi, I'm Jon Cain. The WPI Podcast is your home for news and expertise from the classrooms and labs of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. This is the first of two holiday episodes. In our next episode, we’ll zip through holiday Marketing 101, everything from ads to nostalgia to AI. You'll hear about the strategies behind what you're seeing online and in stores. Let's open up the conversation with this episode. Our guest is Farnoush Reshadi. She's an assistant professor of marketing in tTe Business sShool at WPI. She does research on consumer behavior and how people make gift giving decisions. Farnoush, thanks for joining me at the Global Lab in the Innovation Studio here on campus. It's great to have you on the WPI Podcast.

Farnoush Reshadi: Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here. 

Cain: In your view. What's the biggest joy of holiday gift giving, and what's the biggest stressor of it?

Reshadi: Well, in my view, the biggest joy of gift giving is that you get to give your loved ones a gift that makes them happy, and it feels so good to see the smile on their face when they open that gift and experience that joy. About the stressors, I would say that the most important stressor for buying gifts is that people don't really know what to buy for the other person because it is so hard to understand what somebody else wants where unless you're living with them and you keep track of everything they own. And at the same time as humans, we are not really good at understanding other people's preferences and taking their perspectives.

So it's really hard to understand what other people would prefer to receive, which makes gift giving very hard. And some people experience anxiety because of that. Another stressor is that some people have limited financial resources and when it comes to buying gifts, people splurge on gifts, especially during the holidays when they have to purchase multiple gifts for several recipients. In those situations, if people have financial limitations that would cause some anxiety and sometimes they have to go into debt to do that. 

Cain: I think a lot of people can relate to everything you've just said and, do gift givers and gift recipients think about gifts differently and, and how so?

Reshadi: Absolutely. There's lots of research that show gift givers and recipients approach the gift giving situation very differently. For example, givers select gifts that recipients would not necessarily want or would want to receive them less often. There are many different psychological reasons for this. For example, um, givers when buying gifts, they focus on the moment of the exchange and they try to buy something that brings out emotions in the recipient at the time they receive the gifts. But you know, when it comes to recipients, they think more long term, when they receive a gift, they think about how that fits into their life and how they can actually use it. Because of these different perspectives, recipients and givers would approach the gift giving situation in different way. Additionally gift giving is a longstanding tradition in many cultures, people give each other gifts. Because of that, there are so many rules and norms regarding how to give gifts, how to present them, and what are appropriate forms of gifts. And when it comes to norms, research shows that givers care much more about them, whereas recipients don't care as much. Um, so that causes a little bit of mismatch between givers and recipients’ preferences for gifts. And finally, givers need to understand the recipient's perspective when selecting gifts. But as humans, we're not really good at perspective taking, and we often mis-predict the intensity and also the valence of others' emotions when reacting to a situation. So all of these factors would lead to givers and recipients, having different perspectives on what is a good gift, how to offer a gift, and how to present one when it comes to gift giving. So, for example, one of the research I conduct shows that givers and recipients preferences are different when it comes to the self-improvement product category. Self-improvement products are those that help people improve an aspect of themselves or an ability. Um, my research focused on understanding if givers and recipients had different perspectives about these types of gifts, and I found that givers avoid giving them because they think these types of gifts are going to criticize the recipient, whereas the recipients were more open to receiving them than givers thought. There are many other research that shows that what givers think are good gifts are not necessarily what recipients would want to receive. And even when it comes to the entire gift giving process, um, givers care much more about giving a good gift than recipients. You know, recipients don't care as much as givers about receiving a good gift. It's, you know, after all, it's the thought that counts. 

Cain: Yeah, it's, uh, it's fascinating. I don't know if having this knowledge that there's a mismatch between gift givers and gift recipients makes me more or less stressed, but knowledge is power. How did you get involved in studying gift giving, and how do you do your research? 

Reshadi: So as a doctoral student, I started out researching consumer financial decisions. I was very interested to realize how people spend their money. For example, how do they decide to spend money on specific products? How do they budget, how do they repair their debts? With the goal of understanding how I can help consumers spend their money more efficiently. One day we had a guest speaker who came to our university to talk about his research about giver-recipients asymmetry and after listening to that talk, I told myself, that is a huge waste of money. If you're spending all this much money on a gift to make somebody else happy and you're not even getting it right, that means that your money is actually going to waste.   So after that, I started looking it up and realized how bad this giver-recipient asymmetry is. According to a 2024 survey, Americans actually waste $10.1 billion on unwanted gifts only in December. Isn't that interesting? 

Cain: Whoa  Some room for, uh, efficiency there, 

Reshadi: Right? And out of all this money spent on unwanted gifts, 16% of them will get tossed in the trash immediately after receiving them. Um, you know, those are the gifts that givers selected with the hope that they would make the recipient happy, but these are not gifts that the recipient wanted. So that kind of motivated me to start researching gift giving, to understand how people spend money when it comes to buying products for others and how can we help them become better gift givers to avoid wasting their money and make sure that, you know, their money is actually making their recipient happy. 

Cain: It's fascinating. Can you talk a little bit about how you do the research that you do on the topic? 

Reshadi: So most of the research that I do are causal inferences, which means that I come up with a hypothesis about consumer spending on gifts, or other topics which should make sense based on logic and also based on previous research. Then I collect data using experiments to see if I can find support from my hypothesis using the data. Um, and experiments are basically, um, a type of research where you take two different groups of people or more, that are only different in one area. And you measure some outcome in those two groups and compare that outcome to see if there's actually a difference between that outcome in the two groups. If there is a difference between the outcome in the two groups, it means that was caused by the only difference between those two groups. So when it comes to publishing research for every hypothesis, we usually run several experiments to test that hypothesis, in different conditions, for example, with different products or with different types of gift giving occasions, just to make sure that that hypothesis is generalizable and we can find the same effect in different situations.

Cain: It must be fun to see whether the theories play out, and I imagine there's some surprises, and a lot to be learned about human behavior and, uh, logic that plays into it. 

Reshadi: Right? It's very exciting when you collect data. I usually can't even wait to analyze the data and it feels so good when you collect the data once and you collect the data again and you find the same effect. Sometimes that doesn't happen. So that becomes a little confusing. But it feels so good when you have a hypothesis and you keep finding support and you keep replicating that finding with different studies. 

Cain: Awesome. Well, I'm excited to sort of talk through some of the common questions for holiday shoppers that come up because we now know that gift givers and gift recipients think about these things differently. Um, so why don't we start with, uh, the elephant in the room, gift cards, uh, good gift or not? What does your research, tell us? 

Reshadi: Um, that's a great question. I would say it depends. Gift giving, as I said, is embedded in lots of norms in every culture. Norms are different about whether giving money is considered an appropriate gift or not. Because of that, it depends based on your culture. For example, in the American society, there has been a norm for years that prescribes money is not a great gift. So traditionally money has been considered a taboo gift because it's impersonal. It doesn't signal that you cared enough to spend the time and the effort to buy someone an actual gift. So, it wasn't considered a good gift traditionally, but like every other norm, the societal values and norms change through time. So we see that that norm is becoming less strong than before. Specifically with newer generations, many of them just want money and they don't even want gift cards. They would ask for cash or just Venmo them the money. So, it all depends on the norms of the society that you live in, as well as the recipient's preferences. Um, and sometimes even when you live in a society where there are established norms, your relationship have a different type of norm. Like, for example, if somebody has already given you a gift card, it might be more appropriate to give them one back because now you know that that is accepted within the norms of your relationship. The bottom line is gift cards are practical gifts, which research shows that recipients love. But you have to take into consideration the norms of the occasion, the personality of the recipient, and the norms of your relationship with that person to make sure that they won't be offended by receiving money as a gift. Um, at the same time, I should say that when it comes to givers spending money on gift cards, because most of us are aware of the gift giving norm, that money is not a sentimental gift, compared to when gift givers plan to buy a physical gift for someone else, when they plan to buy a gift card, they tend to spend more to compensate for the lack of signaling care, in the gift card. So they might overspend on gifts when they plan to buy gift cards. 

Cain: Oh, that's interesting. I wanted to ask you about digital gifts. For the longest time, I would avoid purchasing something that needed to be emailed, um, that I couldn't actually bring to someone or, or mail to someone. Uh, I'm wondering is there like a perceived difference in, in value of a, a digital gift or maybe, uh, folks like myself are just overthinking it? 

Reshadi: That's a great question. My colleagues and I, we conducted a study in the context of gift cards to compare whether people prefer to give digital versus physical gift cards. We recruited a number of participants and we assigned them to two different groups. One group selected between a digital gift card and a physical gift card as gift givers. And the other group selected between these two types of gift cards as gift recipients. In one of the studies, 18.4% of givers selected the digital gift card compared to 42.9% of the recipients. So recipients wanted it almost more than twice than givers were willing to give them. Which is interesting. So we conducted a couple other studies and realized that this happens because gift givers believe to a greater extent that gifts should be physical, and digital gift cards are a higher violation of gift giving norms. Although there was an asymmetry between givers and recipients, and recipients were much more likely than givers to select the digital gift card, still more than half of the recipients preferred the physical gift card in the study that we ran. So the bottom line is, yes, recipients are more open to receiving digital items, but still those norms exist in the society that most people prefer that a gift is physical. So these norms might be different with the younger generations or they might be different based on the recipient's personality. So I would say if you know that the recipient prefers digital items, you can go for it. But if not, it's still more than half of them prefer physical items. 

Cain: Very interesting. I'm wondering your thoughts on if you should avoid giving someone the same gift year after year . 

Reshadi: Well, that's an interesting question. Again, my answer is it depends on the gift and the recipient. There is one research paper that has studied how givers and recipients’ preferences for repeat gifts are different. In one study, the researcher compared givers willingness to select a repeat gift over a new gift that the recipient wanted to recipient's willingness to receiving, um, repeat gifts, and found a huge difference between these preferences. So the researcher found that recipients are way more open and are more likely to prepare the repeat gift to a new gift compared to givers. So again, another, uh, situation where givers and recipients’ preferences are different. Um, in several other studies, he repeatedly, he found the same effect and he found that recipients are almost twice as likely as givers to select a repeat gift over one that's new. So this is not something that will offend recipients, but the bottom line is it depends on the recipient and the gift. You have to make sure that this is a gift that you can repeatedly give. And at the same time, it is really hard for givers to understand what a recipient likes. So if you wanna give a repeat gift, you have to make sure that the recipient actually likes and enjoys that item. And it's so hard for givers to understand if the recipient has actually liked an item or not. First of all, it's hard to predict people's preferences, but even after giving them a gift, um, when it comes to gift receiving, recipients do not complain to the giver. After all, it's the thought that counts and most people appreciate you thinking of them and providing something to them. And research shows that most people, even when they're not satisfied with the gift, they will not voice this to the giver. So it's really hard to understand if somebody actually likes the gift. And sometimes just because recipients want to show their appreciation, they would go to great length to show you that they actually like the gift when they have actually not Like we have, different items that we have been gifted throughout the years. Every time the person who gifted us this item is visiting, we just pull it out of the closet, put it on the shelf, because we want them to know that we're thankful, we're grateful, and we understand that they were giving us their love, but it might not necessarily be something that we would put on the shelf for the rest of the year or something that we would enjoy. So because of that, it's so hard to actually know what somebody likes and it might be a little risky to give them the same item twice because you don't really have a way of understanding if they actually like that item or not. So I would tell people, uh, if it's something that you are completely sure that the recipient likes, go for it. You can give it twice or even more than that, but just be careful because you might not even know the truth. 

Cain: It's so true. Yeah, it is, it is difficult to know. You're, you're giving us so much great information to think about and empower us as, as gift givers, and I've got one more, uh, example for you that I'm really anxious to get your thoughts on. And you kind of mentioned it a little bit earlier. Practical gifts, you know, gifts that you can use. Is that considered or thought of as bad form or impersonal in the view of the recipient? 

Reshadi: Not at all. Practical gifts are wonderful. They can be incredibly thoughtful and very well received, even if they're not flashy or sentimental. The idea that they’re bad form or impersonal is more myth than reality and behavioral science backs that up. There are several research that show recipients tend to prefer gifts that are easy to use, fit into their daily lives, and are things that they actually want, rather than getting something that's flashy or gifty and they don't have a lot of use for it. So, a top-rated coffee maker or a sleek wallet might be more appreciated than a quirky gadget or a decorative item. I'm not saying that you should buy someone a vacuum cleaner, but 

Cain: We've certainly heard the stories about that. People ending up on the doghouse. 

Reshadi: Yes. But if there's a product that you know, the recipient is interested in, but it's not flashy and gifty, it's not surprising, you can still buy for them and they would highly appreciate it.

Cain: It's striking me that gift givers and recipients aren't the only ones who are thinking about what makes a good gift and what doesn't. It's really a big business decision for companies. What does your research tell you about how businesses should consider whether to market their products as a gift or not? 

Reshadi: Oh yeah, that's actually true. The gift retailing market is huge. It was around 475 billion in ‘24 and is projected to grow to over 630 billion by 2032 at a growth rate of about 3.6%. So gift giving, it's a huge market. While doing research on consumer behavior when giving gifts, I started to realize that there aren't that many research that can help businesses who sell products as gifts or who are primarily focusing on producing and selling gifts to improve their performance. So, I got interested and I started to do a couple of research in the recent years to figure out how to help those businesses sell their products better as gifts. So one of my recent research with two of my co-authors was focused on understanding consumer willingness to spend when buying the same product for themselves compared to when buying it for somebody else as a gift. What we found was that consumers are willing to spend much more money on the same product when they evaluated it as a gift and when they were considering to buy it as a gift, compared to when they were considering the same product as a purchase for themselves. For example, in one of our studies, we showed two groups of participants a product and asked one group to tell us how much they were willing to pay in dollars to buy that product for themselves. And we asked the other group to tell us how much in dollars they were willing to spend on that product to buy it as a gift. And we found that people were willing to spend 33% more on the same product when they were evaluating it as a gift versus when they were shopping it for themselves, which is very interesting to me. So we found this effect in several other studies with different types of products, and we found that it happens because when it comes to gift giving, when people are evaluating a product as a gift, they tend to focus more on its benefits rather than its cost compared to when they're buying for themself. So this research has implications for consumers as well. So, it tells them that you might be overspending on the same product when you consider it as a gift, but at the same time, this has huge implications for sellers who sell their products as gifts because it tells them that they can't adjust their prices when they sell their products as gifts, for example, during the holiday season and they can charge higher prices when they sell the same product as a gift compared to a self-purchase. So if they start promoting their products as gifts, they might be able to even earn more money, by selling the same product.

Cain: Yeah. It sounds like there's a big market, for them to tap into. 

Reshadi: There definitely is. In another line of work, I focus on a specific type of product category, which we call self-improvement products. These are products that help people improve an aspect of themselves, an ability or a part of their identity. For example, a Fitbit, a self-help book, gym membership, or those teas that help people lose weight, which I don't really know if they help or not, but statistics show that people are spending more and more money on self-improvement products in recent years, and it's a growing market. So, I started a research a couple years back to examining if these products serve as good gifts and see if givers and recipients agree on that. So, that research showed that givers, typically avoid giving self-improvement products as gifts because they think it is going to insinuate to the recipient that they're criticizing them. But, recipients were much more open to receiving them and they were actually asking for them as long as it wasn't suggesting improving themselves in a critical aspect of their identity. 

Cain: Hmm. 

Reshadi: So, if it was something that signaled improvement in an area that they did not really care that much about, they were very open to receiving them and they actually wanted to receive those items as gifts. So that study showed that givers typically avoid giving these products as gifts. But another aspect of it is:  should businesses start promoting these gifts when recipients are more open to receiving them? So that sparked another research which I conducted with one of my colleagues from Florida International University, and we focused on understanding the consequences of receiving a self-improvement product for businesses, not for consumers anymore. What we did was we ran a few experimental studies to see how receiving a self-improvement gift compared to one that was not recommending improvement. For example, a traditional gift would influence consumers and how that affects the business that sells those types of products. So what we found was when consumers received a self-improvement product, they experienced feelings of hurt. So they felt a little hurt by receiving a self-improvement product. And because giving norms suggest that you cannot really voice your complaint to the gift giver, they kind of like dealt with their hurt feelings by taking it out on the product. They started talking a little more negatively about that product to others. And when we asked them to rate the product, they gave it a much lower star rating compared to those that received a non-improvement product. So for businesses, that research shows that they should be a little cautious when it comes to promoting self-improvement product as gifts because it, it could lead to their product getting lower reviews, worse reviews, and lower ratings from consumers, which we know is a huge predictor of sales and it affects businesses a lot.

Cain: You mentioned about people's willingness to spend a little bit more for a gift versus a product for themselves. I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about, uh, what your research has found in that area.

Reshadi: Yeah, so several research, including one of mine that I just explained, show that people are definitely less price sensitive when buying for others compared to when buying for themselves. Um, so people tend to splurge when buying for gifts and, and there's another research that shows even when you set a budget to control your spending. Um, when you are buying a product for somebody else, you try to spend the entire budget on that gift. But when you have a budget for a personal purchase for something for yourself, you tend to try to minimize that budget. So, you try to spend much less of that budget on the product for yourself. So even, you know, when people set a maximum and the amount of money they're going to spend on gifts, they are going to fully use that budget to, um, buy gifts. So overall consumers spend much more when buying gifts compared to when buying for themselves because they're less price sensitive and they focus more on a product's benefits matter than it's cost. 

Cain: Another issue that gift givers have to grapple with is deciding on how expensive of a gift to buy. It's always challenging decision. What does your research tell you about how people decide on how much to spend? And does the income level of the recipient factor into that decision as well? 

Reshadi: Yeah, that's a really tough decision to make. Research shows that givers are generally more sensitive to the gift price than recipients are, because recipients care more about having that feeling of love and care. But when it comes to deciding on a gift budget, because givers are sensitive to the price, they try to think a lot about how much to spend on a gift. And some research shows that the givers spend more on gifts for people who are close to them and also for kids. One of my research for the first time examined one variable that gift givers take into account when budgeting for gifts. My colleague and I, we examined how much people were willing to spend based on their knowledge of the recipient's wealth. And we found that givers do consider the recipient's wealth when deciding on the gift price. And when it comes to determining the price, they buy more expensive gifts for wealthy recipients compared to those with less money, which, you know, is interesting because it should be the other way around. You would expect people to be altruistic and buy more expensive gifts for those who actually need it. But our findings showed that people actually spend more money on gifts for the wealthy compared to the unwealthy for two reasons. First of all, they think that the recipient has a more expensive taste, so they have to spend more money to make sure that they buy a gift that satisfies the recipient. And at the same time, when giving the gift to a wealthy recipient, they don't want to appear cheap. So they tend to increase their budget a little bit. They increase the gift price a little bit to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Cain: Now, how about on the other side of the table, the gift recipients themselves? Do we know what they actually want when it comes to sort of the value or the cost, uh, the sticker price of the gift that they're receiving? 

Reshadi: Yeah, so overall recipients are not that sensitive to the gift price. They're more sensitive to the gift content, but at the same time, they don't wanna receive something that's too cheap and signals that the giver was not really thinking about them. And they don't want to receive something that's too expensive because when you get a gift that's too expensive, um, you feel indebted to the gift giver and now you have to think about how to, um, pay them back. So the gift from the recipient standpoint, it has to be priced right, which is really hard to understand what that price is, but overall they're not really that sensitive to the gift price.

Cain: Gotcha. It sounds like finding that right balance is always good, uh, good advice. 

Shah: Mm-hmm.

Cain: A lot of what you've talked about today, there's I guess a lot of opportunities where people might spend a little bit too much. So I'm wondering if there's any other advice that you have on how people can avoid overspending on holiday shopping? 

Reshadi: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, like any other financial decision, I would recommend people to set a budget for gifts, set a budget per person for gifts, and try not to go over that. That would help them limit their spending and avoid going into debt. I also recommend them to buy gifts in advance when they are on sale. There's research that shows that givers avoid buying gifts on sale because they're afraid that if the recipient find out, they will feel offended. But big news for you, research shows that recipients don't care as much that the gift was bought on sale. So if you have that opportunity, you can buy gifts in advance, for example, during the Black Friday sale to make sure that you can minimize your spending. And finally, when it comes to holiday gift giving, some people feel like they have to give gifts to other people because they expect other people to give them gifts. But if you can't afford to buy gifts, um, you can have a conversation with those people who are going to give you gifts, which are probably your family and friends, and ask them to cancel gift giving, gift exchange that year. So one of my research is actually focusing on this to see if actually people would be offended if you ask them to cancel the gift exchange because of financial scarcity, and big shock,

it shows that people are not offended if you call them in advance and ask them to not exchange gifts that year. So, this is a solution that some people could use if you are in a relationship with some gift recipient where you can openly talk to them about this, just call them and tell them that let's not exchange gifts this year. Um, and that would help you stay within budget and avoid going into debt in case your financial resources are limited. 

Cain: Sounds like communication is key. 

Reshadi: Yeah. 

Cain: Um, do you have any other advice for being a better gift giver that we haven't talked about yet? 

Reshadi: So we've talked about a lot of things, but in general it's okay to ask a recipient or someone close to them what they want. Um, there's research that shows that some recipients actually prefer that, but if you do that, make sure to buy exactly what they ask for and stick to the list. Do not go off the list because then that would cause offense. 

Cain: You know, we've talked so much about, uh, the consumers. I'm. Curious to get a more personal take from you. What's the most memorable or thoughtful gift maybe that you've received or given and, and why did it have such an impact? 

Reshadi: Oh, that's a good question. I've received so many, so many good gifts throughout the years that I can't really pick from. One of the recent ones that I got from my mom was that she brought me a onesie from when I was two months old and she gave it to me as a gift, uh, which now I'm going to use for my baby. 

Cain: Aw.

Reshadi: Yeah, I know. And it was so thoughtful because she has kept it all these years with that in mind that, you know, she can someday pass it on to me. And that shows that she has put a lot of effort and a lot of thought into it years ago. Um, so my favorite gifts are those that are sentimental or someone buys me something that I mentioned at some point, and now they buy it for me, which shows that they've been paying attention to my needs, which, makes me feel loved.

Cain: Of course. Did, did you know that your mom had been holding onto that? 

Reshadi: No, not at all. 

Cain: Wow. Double surprise. Oh my gosh. I wanted to ask you this, I'm wondering what are you teaching in your courses right now at WPI that you're super excited about just kind of wondering what's new in your classrooms?

Reshadi: So I teach two courses at WPI one in consumer psychology, where I go over all the different variables that influence consumers purchase decisions, but I also teach a course in marketing analytics. Marketing has become far more quantitative in recent years because we now have tremendous amount of data from consumers everywhere. Retailers have a lot of data from consumer purchases both online and in the store. People are posting on social media millions of posts every day are being posted about products that they purchase. And also, retailers have a lot of information on consumer preferences for products through the reviews that consumers publish online. For example, the Amazon reviews and analyzing all this available data could help uncover lots of insights about consumer behavior for the businesses that run them, and also for research on consumer psychology. So in my course I try to teach students various techniques that can be used to analyze these types of data, to extract useful marketing insights. Um, and I'm trying to incorporate that more in my research to start exploring consumer psychology using all the available data that, are publicly available.  Marketing analytics jobs are surprisingly expected to grow by 13% between 22 and 2032. Um, this is a statistic from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which shows that, the demand for marketing analytics jobs is growing. So in the business school, we're trying to prepare students for those types of jobs.

Cain: Well, Farnoush, thanks so much for taking time to talk with us about all things gift giving. It's been great to have you on the WPI Podcast. 

Reshadi: Well, thanks for having me. It's always gets me passionate to talk about consumer psychology, so I highly appreciate that you invited me on this podcast.

Cain:

Happy to have you hear and happy gift giving to everyone listening. Farnoush Reshadi is an assistant professor of marketing in the Business School at WPI. Join us next time on the WPI Podcast for another holiday episode. We're all signed up for a crash course in holiday marketing 101, so you can be an empowered shopper. We’ll be joined by Purvi Shah, an associate professor of marketing in The Business School. She does research on marketing and brand management. She’ll help us explore how retailers tap into nostalgia, ads, store design, AI tools and more this time of year. And we’ll hear from you. We asked listeners to get nostalgic and tell us about beloved childhood items that they'd love to gift or get this holiday season. You’ll hear some of the responses. As a reminder, you can learn more about the academic programs, courses, and supports for student innovation and entrepreneurship offered through the Business School at WPI by checking out wpi.edu. This has been the WPI podcast. Find this and other podcasts from across campus at wpi.edu/listen. That's also the home for audio versions of WPI News stories about our students, faculty and staff. If you like what you hear, please follow this podcast and WPI News on your favorite audio platform. We'd also love your review and tell a friend about us too, if you'd be so kind. You can get the latest WPI news by asking Alexa to open WPI. This podcast was produced at the WPI Global Lab in the Innovation Studio. I had audio engineering help from PhD candidate, Varun Bhat and from computer science and music undergraduate student Aster Dettweiler. Tune in next time for another episode of the WPI Podcast. I'm Jon Cain. Thanks for listening.