“Speaking of Purchases”: How Conversational Potential Determines Consumers’ Willingness to Exert Effort for Experiential versus Material Purchases
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Consumers spend much of their incomes on two types of purchases: experiences and material objects. Recent research has successfully used this purchase type categorization to predict various types of social and psychological consumer outcomes. The present investigation extends this research to a novel domain of primary relevance to firms—that of consumer effort. Specifically, this work advances and tests the prediction that consumers are more willing to exert effort to acquire experiential versus material purchases. Further, drawing on literature on online and offline consumer interactions, it proposes that the greater conversational potential of experiences (vs. objects) explains this effect. Five studies employing mediation, moderation, and actual-choice approaches, applying different methodologies to purchases (past, future, and framed purchases) and testing different types of acquisition effort (e.g., to save money, to wait in a line to make the purchase) offer converging evidence in support of the predicted model. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Source: Journal of Interactive Marketing
Author: Wilson Bastos
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3002199398