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Though
we all have guilty pleasures, our day-to-day decisions
are usually governed by a deep-seated sense that we’d be
better off in the long run if we favored work over
leisure, necessities over luxuries and saving money over
impulsively spending it. But would we be happier? Our
research shows that forgoing indulgences today can feed
strong regrets later, and that near-term regrets about
self-indulgence dramatically fade with time. These
responses are so strong that we were able to influence
people’s buying behavior simply by asking them to
anticipate their long-term regrets.
One of
our studies—published in the Journal of Consumer
Research—explored the regret felt by college students
over their conduct on recent winter breaks and by alumni
remembering winter breaks of 40 years ago. Regret about
not having spent or traveled more during breaks
increased with time, whereas regret about not having
worked, studied or saved money during breaks decreased
with time. We saw a similar pattern in a study of how
businesspeople perceived past choices between work and
pleasure. Over time, those who had indulged felt less
and less guilty about their choices, whereas those who
had been dutiful experienced a growing sense of having
missed out on the pleasures of life.
People
who unduly resist self-indulgence suffer from an
excessive farsightedness, or hyperopia—the reverse of
typical self-control problems. Rather than yielding to
temptation, they focus on acquiring necessities and
acting responsibly and they see indulgence as wasteful,
irresponsible and even immoral. As a result, these
consumers avoid precisely the products and experiences
that they most enjoy. Their hyperopia can inhibit
consumption in ways that are bad both for their own
well-being and for marketers’ bottom lines. We don’t
advocate trying to motivate consumers to make
ill-considered purchases, of course, but marketers can
help customers make appropriately indulgent choices that
they’ll appreciate over the long term.
In
another of our studies, forthcoming in the Journal of
Marketing Research, 57 consumers were asked in advance
of a shopping-mall trip to consider two possibilities:
buying an expensive item of clothing that would make
them happy, or buying a cheaper alternative that would
allow them to spend the saved money on more-practical
things. Half were then asked to predict which of the two
possibilities would cause them the greatest regret the
next day, while the other half were asked to consider
the regret they might feel over each purchase several
years later.
After
the shopping trip, we examined the consumers’ actual
purchases. As we expected, those who had anticipated
regret the next day tended to buy more-practical goods;
those who had considered regret in the more distant
future bought more-indulgent products. In other words,
thinking about short-term regret drives consumers to be
virtuous, whereas thinking about long-term regret leads
them to be extravagant.
Our
findings suggest that marketers of luxury products and
leisure services could benefit from prompting consumers
to predict their feelings in the future if they forgo
the indulgent choice. For instance, a travel company
might ask customers to consider how they’ll feel about
having passed up a family vacation package once the nest
is empty.
Consumers, too, can benefit from such prompts. In the
words of the late Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas,
“Nobody on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent
more time at the office.”’
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Anat Keinan is an assistant professor of business
administration at Harvard Business School in Boston. Ran
Kivetz is a professor of marketing at Columbia Business
School in New York. |
