What is your experience about the happiness brought about by buying and buying? Some people say that unpacking is a super happy thing, and unpacking is more enjoyable than using it; but there are also people who regret it after buying it, or really dislike the entanglement when picking things.
What kind of purchase can bring the greatest happiness? How has purchasing behavior changed in life? This issue of 0-Hour Difference Psychological Letters will take you on a shopping path and see how psychologists grasp the psychology of "buying, buying, buying".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right"> 01 </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Topic 1: Money spent on experience is happier? </h1>
In your mind, is it better to buy a long-desired dress (or running shoes) or to listen to an idol sing?
Psychologists divide purchasing behavior into the following two categories:
Experiential purchases: travel, entertainment, outdoor activities, eating out, etc
Material purchases: buy electronic products, clothing, jewelry, furniture, etc
Studies have shown that people derive more happiness and satisfaction from experiential purchases than material purchases, both in imagining the future and recalling the past.
But memories will be beautified, expectations will be overestimated, for this moment, how to consume happier? Three researchers in the United States answered the puzzle of people's "instantaneous" measure of happiness.
Amit Kumar et al. recruited 2,635 adults with an average age of 32 years old, and when they were awake, they would randomly receive calls asking "how it feels now" to judge their mood at the moment.
The researchers will then randomly ask them whether they have consumed material/experiential consumption in the past hour, and if they answer "yes," they will continue to ask questions about the purpose of their consumption (for work or entertainment, for themselves or others), what they bought, and the price.
The results again showed that people who had just made experiential purchases were happier than those who did not consume, while those who had just made material purchases had less high levels of happiness.
In other words, the same money is saved, and watching a concert is more enjoyable than buying a dress at the same price.
Researchers explain that when we make experiential consumption, we are more enjoyable in it ourselves, and we can also be closer to others, such as punching in the "internet celebrity restaurant" with friends and enjoying getting along with friends, which increases our happiness.
The next time you want to be nice to yourself, instead of rewarding yourself with a bag and a car, it is better to let yourself go on a trip and watch a ball game on the spot.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right"> 02 </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Topic 2: How does a buyer show affect different consumption? </h1>
According to a recent survey, more than 90% of people read customer reviews before making a purchase. What about you? Do you watch a buyer show before you buy something online and decide to place an order?
In fact, everyone is more or less affected by shopping reviews, and even specifically asks people who have already purchased, is xx really easy to use?
How exactly does this "dependence on consumer evaluation" affect our purchases? Research by Cidny Chan and others at the University of Toronto tells us the answer.
The researchers recruited 203 college students (50 percent women) to choose between two cooking classes (considered experiential consumption) or two espresso machines (considered material consumption).
In each option, participants were given an image and product description, as well as a consumer review. This consumer review is random, with one option being a 5-star positive rating and the other a negative review.
The results show that people rely more on shopping evaluation when they consume material goods (buying coffee machines).
That is to say, compared with Amway's "xx coffee machine is easy to use", people are more reluctant to accept the "xx cooking class is particularly useful to learn quickly" advice.
This is because when we buy a product, more attention is paid to the quality of the goods, and it needs to be evaluated through the use experience of the people who have bought it to judge whether the value is worth buying.
In addition, further research shows that people will still be very concerned about the "quality evaluation" of experiential purchases. For example, even if the hotel has been booked before the trip, once you see someone commenting that the hotel is not good, you will still waver and then reconsider.
At this time, everyone may think: "Hey, my friends and I said that the latest movie is good, it is easy to succeed in Amway, he went to the cinema to see it", that is because when we tell others what we have recently watched and bought, it is more of a social, establish contact with others, and there is an essential difference between the anonymous shopping reviews on the Internet.
In addition, there are many praises that are "brushed" out of the phenomenon, and everyone still has to polish their eyes when shopping online.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right"> 03 </h1>
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Topic 3: The Wrong Way of Experiential Consumption? </h1>
In fact, as the living conditions slowly improve, we have a lot of new desires. In addition to buying beautiful clothes and watches, I also pay attention to spiritual and cultural needs. At this time, a new phenomenon arose: conspicuous consumption.
In the past, conspicuous consumption mostly referred to the fact that people would buy durable consumer goods such as brand-name watches and cars to show their wealth, identity, and status, which generally appeared in the stage of material purchase. Nowadays, consumer behavior has changed, people have spent more on cultural and artistic activities, and experiential shopping has also appeared to be conspicuous consumption.
So what is the impact of conspicuous consumption in experiential shopping?
Two Dutch scholars, Fred Bronner and Robert de Hoog, have teamed up with a cultural brand to divide cultural and artistic activities into six categories: museums, theatres, festivals or events, cinemas, classical concerts and pop concerts.
The researchers randomly selected 2248 participants who generally went to a cultural event, then asked them what they thought of the people who participated in the cultural event (such as going to a museum), whether they liked to tell friends that they had gone to the museum, and evaluated the following questions:
Status: (total agreement = 7, total disagreement = 1)
1. Increase other people's appreciation of me
2. It will increase my popularity among friends and colleagues
3. It will arouse the respect of others
4. Makes me feel more important
5. To demonstrate success in life
6. The presence of successful and reputable people is important to me
Identity: (total agreement = 7, total disagreement = 1)
1. Showed my unique experience
2. I'll go to some trendy places
3. Let me show who I am
The results show that in these 6 types of activities, experiential purchases such as attending cultural festivals, classical concerts and popular concerts reflect more conspicuous consumption than watching movies.
At the same time, it is also more able to express a person's personality, indicate a person's identity and status, and others are more likely to judge what kind of person this person is.
Researchers explain that for example, the seats in concerts are distinguished by price, while the seats in the cinema are all priced, and activities such as concerts and cultural festivals are tall projects for most people, so they can reflect a person's success and gain the respect of others.
And especially now that there is Weibo WeChat, casually send a picture to post the circle of friends, it will double face.
Perhaps, when we listen to concerts and participate in activities, we can pay attention to whether we really enjoy it, or whether it is just for the "circle of friends punch", which is very likely to reduce the current pleasant experience.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > written at the end</h1>
At the end of the year, many people were surprised when they saw Alipay's annual bill: I didn't know I was so rich! Flipping through the shopping records, it turned out that we inadvertently spent a lot of "wronged" money, and when tidying up the room, we often turned over a lot of things that were bought and left idle.
Maybe it is happy at the moment of possession, but it is found that it is actually useless, which is to waste too much on material consumption, and perhaps to harvest more happiness in experiential consumption
I hope that everyone can shop rationally and find a useful and happy way to "buy, buy, buy" to improve the quality of life!
- The End -
References / References:
[1] Kumar, A., Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilovich, T. (2020). Spending on doing promotes more moment-to-moment happiness than spending on having. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 88, 103971.
[2] Dai, H., Chan, C., & Mogilner, C. (2019). People rely less on consumer reviews for experiential than material purchases. Available at SSRN 2493536.
[3] Bronner, F., & de Hoog, R. (2019). Comparing conspicuous consumption across different experiential products: Culture and leisure. International Journal of Market Research, 61(4), 430-446.