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Consumers’ minimum time investments in meaningful consumption

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Abstract

Consumer well-being involves not only the pursuit of pleasure, but also the pursuit of meaning. However, little is known about how people perceive the costs and benefits of meaning- versus pleasure-oriented experiences. We find that compared to pleasure-oriented experiences, people expect meaning-oriented experiences to be more satisfying after meeting a minimum time investment (i.e., the perceived minimum amount of time needed to derive benefits from consumption; study 1). As a consequence, people choose to prolong their exposure to meaningful (vs. pleasurable) experiences following interruptions (study 2). We discuss the implications of minimum time investments for firms’ relationships with consumers and marketing communication design (web appendix).

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All materials and data are available at the following OSF repository: https://osf.io/bgckx/?.

Notes

  1. https://aspredicted.org/VLN_J79

  2. https://aspredicted.org/D9Z_BGY

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Philip Fernbach, Bart de Langhe, John Lynch, A. Peter McGraw, Nick Reinholtz, Margaret Campbell, Kathleen Vohs, and the CU Boulder LEAD Lab for their valuable feedback on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Maine Business School, University of Maine, 5732 DP Corbett Business Building, Orono, ME, 04473, USA

    Erin Percival Carter

  2. Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, UCB 419, Boulder, CO, 80309, USA

    Lawrence E. Williams

  3. Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon, Lillis Business Complex, 955 E 13th Ave., Eugene, OR, 97403, USA

    Nicholas Light

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  1. Erin Percival Carter
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  2. Lawrence E. Williams
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Correspondence to Nicholas Light.

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Carter, E.P., Williams, L.E. & Light, N. Consumers’ minimum time investments in meaningful consumption. Mark Lett (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-023-09709-z

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