Shopping brings pleasure. That's a fact. But can it make a person truly happy? Scientists are not sure about this. Many of them criticize shopping and do not recommend using it as a psychotherapeutic exercise. Because, firstly, the pleasure from shopping lasts very short, and, secondly, it is addictive: as soon as the positive effect disappears, you have to go to the store again for a new dose of endorphins.
The World Bank estimated in 2018 that nearly 70% of the American economy is consumer spending. So be that as it may, the modern world literally revolves around shopping. And while it can be avoided when it comes to a new dress or spinning equipment, you can’t do without essential goods. So spending money is not only normal, it’s simply necessary.
But you shouldn't turn shopping into your main hobby. And the point is not only that it can be addictive and eat a huge hole in the family budget, but also that there is a much more effective way to spend money in terms of getting the hormone of happiness.
Buy experiences, not things
In 2020, Amit Kumar, a professor of marketing and psychology at the Department of Marketing and Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, published the results of an interesting study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which involved 2,635 American adults.
Over the course of several months, they received invitations to take a short survey on their smartphone. Sometimes the questions were abstract and had nothing to do with shopping. For example, participants might be asked what they did yesterday, what time they went to bed, etc. But every now and then they were asked if they had made any purchases recently. If the participant answered yes, they were asked a series of more questions.
In particular, those that helped assign the buyer to one of two categories: material or empirical. Material purchases included any things. Home appliances or clothes, electronics or cosmetics. Empirical ones included experiences. For example, tickets to a concert or football match, dinner at a restaurant, a trip, etc.
I think you guessed it, in all cases, experiential purchases brought people much more happiness than purchases of things. Even when the authors of the study singled out among material purchases those that were ultimately intended for leisure and recreation, say a new grill or picnic set, or for themselves personally, the level of happiness from them was significantly lower than from purchases of experiences. And this is even though the average cost of experiential purchases was three times less than the price of the purchased goods: $373.60 versus $1,126.91.
On average, the level of happiness from a regular material purchase was almost no different from the level that participants felt when they refused to make a purchase at all.
Experience costs are combined
But that’s not all. In March of this year, Amit Kumar published another similar study. However, this time he focused on studying the relationship between the type of spending and the feeling of social connection. In seven experiments involving 1,400 people, he proved that experiential purchases socialize much better than material ones.
In such cases, people felt much more connected and related to those who were buying a similar experience. One of the reasons for this phenomenon, the author of the work believes, is the fact that empirical purchases say much more about a person than material ones. So when you are standing behind a ticket to the concert of Ocean Elsa, the neighbors in line will seem much more familiar than those who are buying the exact same dress at H&M.
Such expenses cause much less envy when it comes to buying the same product of different quality or price category. So someone watching a performance from the stalls will feel much more kinship with the viewer in the gallery than two owners of iPhones of different generations.
It may seem obvious to you that experiential shopping is much better at socializing. After all, we usually go to a concert with friends, and go on a trip with the whole family. However, the author of the work insists: it is about a sense of belonging to society and even humanity, no matter how pathetic it may sound.
So now you know how to spend money to get your own little bit of happiness and feel better. Of course, this doesn't mean that you should now spend all your free money on concerts and visits to the zoo. But all else being equal, if shopping is part of your leisure time, instead of a new dress or spinning class, it's better to buy tickets to the cinema or theater.
