IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/stabus/2084.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Happiness Impacts Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Mogilner, Cassie

    (University of PA)

  • Aaker, Jennifer

    (Stanford University)

  • Kamvar, Sepandar

    (MIT)

Abstract

Consumers want to be happy, and marketers are increasingly trying to appeal to consumers' pursuit of happiness. However, the results of six studies reveal that what happiness means varies, and consumers' choices reflect those differences. In some cases happiness is defined as feeling excited, and in other cases happiness is defined as feeling calm. The type of happiness pursued is determined by one's temporal focus, such that individuals tend to choose more exciting options when focused on the future, and more calming options when focused on the present moment. These results suggest that the definition of happiness, and consumers' resulting choices, are dynamic and malleable.

Suggested Citation

  • Mogilner, Cassie & Aaker, Jennifer & Kamvar, Sepandar, 2011. "How Happiness Impacts Choice," Research Papers 2084, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:2084
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP2084-1.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gilles Laurent & Raphaelle Lambert-Pandraud, 2010. "Why Do Older Consumers Buy Older Brands? The Role of Attachment and Declining Innovativeness," Post-Print hal-00528378, HAL.
    2. Adaval, Rashmi, 2003. "How Good Gets Better and Bad Gets Worse: Understanding the Impact of Affect on Evaluations of Known Brands," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 30(3), pages 352-367, December.
    3. Patti Williams & Aimee Drolet, 2005. "Age-Related Differences in Responses to Emotional Advertisements," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(3), pages 343-354, December.
    4. Hakkyun Kim & Kiwan Park & Norbert Schwarz, 2010. "Will This Trip Really Be Exciting? The Role of Incidental Emotions in Product Evaluation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(6), pages 983-991, April.
    5. Meloy, Margaret G, 2000. "Mood-Driven Distortion of Product Information," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(3), pages 345-359, December.
    6. Easterlin, Richard A., 2003. "Building a Better Theory of Well-Being," IZA Discussion Papers 742, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Mogilner, Cassie & Aaker, Jennifer L., 2009. "The Time vs. Money Effect: Shifting Product Attitudes and Decisions through Personal Connection," Research Papers 2014, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    8. Wright, William F. & Bower, Gordon H., 1992. "Mood effects on subjective probability assessment," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 276-291, July.
    9. Cassie Mogilner & Jennifer Aaker, 2009. ""The Time vs. Money Effect": Shifting Product Attitudes and Decisions through Personal Connection," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 277-291.
    10. Kahn, Barbara E & Isen, Alice M, 1993. "The Influence of Positive Affect on Variety Seeking among Safe, Enjoyable Products," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 20(2), pages 257-270, September.
    11. Leonardo Nicolao & Julie R. Irwin & Joseph K. Goodman, 2009. "Happiness for Sale: Do Experiential Purchases Make Consumers Happier than Material Purchases?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 36(2), pages 188-198.
    12. Rajagopal Raghunathan & Michel T. Pham & Kim P. Corfman, 2006. "Informational Properties of Anxiety and Sadness, and Displaced Coping," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 32(4), pages 596-601, March.
    13. Tiedens, Larissa Z. & Linton, Susan, 2001. "Judgment under Emotional Uncertainty: The Effects of Specific Emotions and Their Associated Certainty Appraisals on Information Processing," Research Papers 1629, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    14. Aaker, Jennifer & Benet-Martinez, Veronica & Garolera, Jordi, 2001. "Consumption Symbols as Carriers of Culture: A Study of Japanese and Spanish Brand Personality Constructs," Research Papers 1668r, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mogilner, Cassie & Kamvar, Sepandar D. & Aaker, Jennifer, 2010. "The Shifting Meaning of Happiness," Research Papers 2070, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dawid Gajda, 2020. "Polish Young Consumers’ AttitudesTowards Mobile Phone Brands," Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 2(11), pages 4-15.
    2. Kovacheva, Aleksandra & Nikolova, Hristina & Lamberton, Cait, 2022. "Will he buy a surprise? Gender differences in the purchase of surprise offerings," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 98(4), pages 667-684.
    3. Lee, Shinhyoung & Park, Kiwan, 2022. "How looking forward over the short period to-go affects consumer enjoyment: Role of temporal scarcity in access-based services," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    4. Louro, M.J.S., 2005. "Leaving pleasure : Positive emotions and goal-directed behavior," Other publications TiSEM a8907dd8-8fb1-45c9-b72d-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Goodell, John W. & Kumar, Satish & Rao, Purnima & Verma, Shubhangi, 2023. "Emotions and stock market anomalies: A systematic review," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    6. Simona Šarotar Žižek & Matjaž Mulej & Sonja Treven, 2010. "Requisite Holism Of Individuals As A Precondition For The Humankind’S Way Out From The 2008- Crisis," Analele Stiintifice ale Universitatii "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" din Iasi - Stiinte Economice (1954-2015), Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 57, pages 399-419, november.
    7. Steven J. Stanton & Crystal Reeck & Scott A. Huettel & Kevin S. LaBar, 2014. "Effects of induced moods on economic choices," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 9(2), pages 167-175, March.
    8. Puccinelli, Nancy M. & Goodstein, Ronald C. & Grewal, Dhruv & Price, Robert & Raghubir, Priya & Stewart, David, 2009. "Customer Experience Management in Retailing: Understanding the Buying Process," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 15-30.
    9. Chan, Chien Sheng Richard & Park, Haemin Dennis, 2013. "The influence of dispositional affect and cognition on venture investment portfolio concentration," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 397-412.
    10. Müller, Holger & Lehmann, Sebastian & Sarstedt, Marko, 2013. "The time vs. money effect. A conceptual replication," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 199-200.
    11. Xinxin Chen & Hongyan Yu, 2020. "The Impacts of the Personality Attribute of Time and Money on Customer Engagement Behavior: A Self-concept Perspective," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 13(7), pages 1-14, July.
    12. Luqiong Tong & Yuhuang Zheng & Ping Zhao, 2013. "Is money really the root of all evil? The impact of priming money on consumer choice," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 119-129, June.
    13. Johnson, Samuel G.B. & Park, Seo Young, 2021. "Moral signaling through donations of money and time," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 183-196.
    14. Yong Zhang & Chuling Lin & Jialing Yang, 2019. "Time or Money? The Influence of Warm and Competent Appeals on Donation Intentions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-17, November.
    15. Nash, Jane Gradwohl & Rosenthal, Robert A., 2014. "An investigation of the endowment effect in the context of a college housing lottery," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 74-82.
    16. Chatterjee, Subimal & Rai, Dipankar & Heath, Timothy B., 2016. "Tradeoff between time and money: The asymmetric consideration of opportunity costs," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(7), pages 2560-2566.
    17. Chiradip Chatterjee & Nafisa Halim & Pallab Mozumder, 2022. "Energy conservation and health risk reduction: an experimental investigation of punishing vs. rewarding incentives," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 24(4), pages 551-570, October.
    18. Luo, Anqi & Ye, Tian & Xue, Xunyue & Mattila, Anna S., 2021. "Appreciation vs. apology: When and why does face covering requirement increase revisit intention?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    19. Lynch, John G. & Bradlow, Eric T. & Huber, Joel C. & Lehmann, Donald R., 2015. "Reflections on the replication corner: In praise of conceptual replications," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 333-342.
    20. Adriana Breaban & Charles N Noussair, 2018. "Emotional State and Market Behavior [Bubbling with excitement: en experiment]," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 22(1), pages 279-309.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:2084. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsstaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.