Materialistic Consumption Of Happiness

According to Van Boven and Gilovich(2003), materialistic consumption serves material possession as an objective meanwhile experiential consumption intends to retrieve life experiences.

In terms of happiness, with reference to Diener and Oishi(1997), happiness is related to the sentimentall state, the life experiences that brings constant pleasure to one. Happiness is divergent to pleasure in terms of their duration, satisfaction that last only for a short period of time is regarded as pleasure. In experiential consumption, the engendered personal satisfaction could last for a lifetime, while that from material consumption would fade away associated with the social trend.

In Psychological Science (2014) , the scientists and professors have

In addition, the reaped experiences and goods from experiential consumption have allowed the reinterpretation to take place, one can re-examine or rebuild one’s identity and social relationships with it, and to fight against low self-esteem as suggested by Dunning (2005). One can easily recover from the depression with the high self-judgement and identity obtained from experiential consumption (Dunning 2005), hence the benefits brought by experiential consumption is always long-lasting.

Moreover, the absence of comparison in experiential consumption, it can precipitate happiness (Carter & Gilovich 2010,2014). Due to the nature of experiential is the personal and intrinsic feeling that are generated, unlike material consumption, there is a limited ground for consumers to compare with others (Carter & Gilovich 2010,2014). With the study organized by Howell and Hill (2009), it is demonstrated that social comparison poses a negative correlation on well-being, thus the absence of comparison in experiential consumption can bring

(Caprariello & Reis, 2010). With experiential consumption, one can share one’s experience and consumption process with others, and getting attention from surroundings (Bastos, 2012; Van Boven et al., 2010). For example, when you go on vacation with your friends, you can plan the itinerary and take photos with your friends which can reinforce or even build up the social relationships with them, meanwhile you may meet some new friends during the trip that may also contribute to your social relationship as well. After your trip, you may share your experiences with your family and acquaintances, during the practice of sharing experiences, one can obtain satisfaction. On the other hand, material consumption is always regarded as acquiring status that is an egocentric behaviour that some people maybe reluctant to communicate with material consumers because of their flauntiness, leading to collapse of social relationship (Van Boven et al.,