Abstract

A wealth of consumer research has proposed an experiential advantage: consumers yield greater happiness from purchasing experiences compared to material possessions. While this research stream has undoubtedly influenced consumer research, few have questioned its limitations, explored moderators, or investigated filedrawer effects. This has left marketing managers, consumers, and researchers questioning the relevance of the experiential advantage. To address these questions, the authors develop a model of consumer happiness and well-being based on psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, relatedness, self-esteem, and meaningfulness), and conduct an experiential advantage meta-analysis to test this model. Collecting 360 effect sizes from 141 studies, the meta-analysis supports the experiential advantage (d = 0.383, 95% CI [0.336, 0.430]), of which approximately a third of the effect may be attributable to publication bias. The analysis finds differential effects depending on the type of dependent measure, suggesting that the experiential advantage may be more tied to relatedness than to happiness and willingness to pay. The experiential advantage is reduced for negative experiences, for solitary experiences, for lower socioeconomic status consumers, and when experiences provide a similar level of utilitarian benefits relative to material goods. Finally, results suggest future studies in this literature should use larger sample sizes than current practice.

中文翻译：

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重新检验消费的经验优势：一项荟萃分析和回顾

摘要

大量的消费者研究提出了一种体验优势：与物质财产相比，消费者通过购买体验获得更大的幸福感。尽管此研究流无疑影响了消费者研究，但很少有人质疑它的局限性，探索版主或研究文件抽屉的效果。这使营销经理，消费者和研究人员对体验优势的相关性提出了质疑。为了解决这些问题，作者基于心理需求（即自主性，亲密性，自尊和有意义性）开发了消费者幸福感和幸福感模型，并进行了经验优势荟萃分析以测试该模型。这项荟萃分析从141项研究中收集了360种效应量，支持了经验优势（d  =  0.383，95％CI [0.336，0.430]），其中约三分之一的影响可能归因于出版偏向。分析发现，依赖项类型的不同会产生不同的影响，这表明经验优势可能更多地与关联性相关，而不是与幸福感和支付意愿相关。对于负面经历，孤独经历，较低社会经济地位的消费者，以及与物质产品相比，经验提供类似水平的功利收益时，经验优势会降低。最后，结果表明该文献中的未来研究应使用比当前实践更大的样本量。