A common theme I explore in my work is whether consumption fosters meaningful well-being. The route to optimal well-being has long been debated, with two opposing philosophies: hedonia and eudaimonia. Aristippus (3rd Century BCE) maintained that physical, momentary, pleasure is the root of well-being regardless of how it is obtained (Tatarkiewicz 1976). In contrast, Aristotle (4th Century BCE) considered pleasure seeking a vulgar ideal and believed that true well-being is produced by personal growth, meaning, and the development of one’s best self (Ryan and Deci 2001; Waterman 1990). Researchers and laypeople alike characterize consumption as hedonic and assume that it cannot produce meaningful growth (eudaimonia). This is reflected in prior work demonstrating that materialism and material purchases undermine well-being, with consumption operationalized and equated with pleasure-seeking and extrinsic aspiration. However, it is the motivation for behavior that matters: why one consumes not simply what one consumes (Sheldon et al. 2004). My theorizing suggests that people can obtain meaningful well-being from consumption when it is rooted in intrinsic motivation. By drawing on self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan 2000) and compensatory control theory (Kay et al. 2008), I can explain why consumer motivations can promote well-being and influence both brand perception and product evaluation.
My research on the well-being of consumers starts by examining early adopters of innovation. If consumption is purely an extrinsic aspiration, then the emergence of new technology should theoretically not produce well-being. However, if early adoption behaviors are intrinsically motivated, consumption should promote well-being. In our study (with Sergio Carvalho, manuscript under 2nd-round review), I show that early adoption behaviors predict personal growth, driven by increases in competence, with these effects most pronounced when consumers pursue engagement (vs. pleasure) as the basis for happiness. This demonstrates that adopting innovation can be an intrinsic aspiration, with substantive benefits to well-being as a result.
In a second project following up on these results, I find that it is not only early adopters who experience personal growth from consumption. Customers also experience personal growth when they earnestly learn about products, the foundation for a new construct I have coined Consumer Self-development (McManus, Carvalho, Trifts and Mar, in prep., manuscript available upon request).
Following a systematic, 10 step approach to scale development and validation, I created the Consumer Self-development scale, demonstrating its reliability, validity, and useful application. Consumer Self-development is multifaceted, composed of increases in consumption knowledge, self-knowledge, and perceived competence. Applying the scale in a realistic context, I establish the antecedents of Consumer Self-development and also demonstrate its positive impacts on consumer judgments (e.g., new product evaluation) and well-being (e.g., meaning in life).
For marketing practitioners, this work can inform segmentation, targeting, differentiation, and positioning. For policymakers, it exemplifies how consumerism can foster healthier markets, with mutual benefits for consumers and industry. For consumers, I provide a practical roadmap to aid those who want to maximize well-being through consumption. Lastly, Consumer Self-development has several theoretical implications spanning innovation, brand authenticity, and compensatory consumption. I am currently pursuing further implications of Consumer Self-development, with respect to fostering brand communities and a sense of self resilient to psychological threat (McManus and Deval, in progress a, b).
In another project (with Gavan Fitzsimons and Aaron Kay, in progress, 2 studies completed, 2 collecting), we highlight a peculiar trade-off decision that consumers make when their motivation for functional utility is pitted against their motivation to fulfill a psychological need. Surprisingly, this tension can result in consumers actually preferring an inferior (vs. superior) product. The practice of planned obsolescence—creating products that wear out by design—is perceived by consumers as highly unethical.
It is therefore not surprising that product evaluations typically plummet when planned obsolescence is revealed for a given product. However, people also need structure in their world and when this need is threatened, they compensate by affirming other sources of structure (Kay et al. 2008). For example, when structure in one area of life is threatened, we actually prefer more predictable outcomes even when they are negative, compared to less negative but less predictable outcomes. In several studies, we find that a personal need for structure predicts increased evaluations for a product designed to fail. Intriguingly, we also uncover a boundary condition, in that this effect does not occur among consumers who do not trust the brand. This is the first evidence that planned obsolescence can serve a psychological need and that, under certain conditions, evaluations of planned obsolescence can be enhanced.
