Women derive more happiness and life satisfaction from meaningful experiences than men whereas men derive more happiness and satisfaction with life from pleasurable experiences than women

Experiences and happiness: The role of gender. J. Joško Brakus, Weifeng Chen, Bernd Schmitt, Lia Zarantonello. Psychology & Marketing, May 27 2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21677

Abstract> It is well established that experiences make people happy, but we still know little about how individual differences affect the relationship between consumption of experiences and happiness. This study focuses on gender as the predictor of happiness and addresses the following question: Do women and men differ in the way they attain happiness from consumption of experiences? Considering that research shows that women and men differ in how they process information, it is possible that they differ in how much they reflect on an experience too. Therefore, this study also investigates how the relationship between consumption of experiences and gender is moderated by Need for Cognition (NFC) in affecting subjective happiness. The results of a survey of adult consumers show than women derive more happiness and life satisfaction from meaningful experiences than men whereas men derive more happiness and satisfaction with life from pleasurable experiences than women. NFC moderates these results. The study provides evidence for the distinction between pleasure and meaning in consumption contexts and for the important role of gender in consumption of experiences. Its results imply that design and structuring of commercial experiences should take customer gender into account.

4 GENERAL DISCUSSION

4.1 Theoretical implications

The empirical study and structural analysis strongly support the offered conceptualization on the important role of gender in consumption of experiences affecting consumer happiness. Men seem to derive more happiness and satisfaction with life from pleasurable experiences than women, while women derive more happiness and satisfaction with life from personally fulfilling (or meaningful) experiences than men.

Our results thus support the notion that pleasure and meaning are separate dimensions that matter greatly when consumers assess how happy and satisfied they are with life as part of a variety of consumed experiences. This study finds that personal fulfilment (or meaning) as an experience evoked by consumption directly and positively affects subjective happiness and life satisfaction. However, while pleasure also directly affects life satisfaction, it does not influence immediate subjective happiness. It is possible that the evoked pleasure may be detrimental to subjective happiness because consumption for pleasure may be seen as frivolous, resulting in guilt (Boujbel & d'Astous, 2015; Lascu, 1991). In our sample of Western consumers, this effect holds not only for women, but also for men. In Western, gender-equal societies consuming for pleasure may generally trigger negative materialistic stereotypes (Kilbourne & LaForge, 2010), and therefore attenuate the positive effect of pleasure on subjective happiness.

However, when consumers change the time perspective and assess their life satisfaction—rather than the immediate post-consumption happiness—they seem to see the positive role that pleasure has for their life satisfaction. The shift in the perspective may enable them to think in more abstract terms (Trope & Liberman, 2010), and to think positively about the role pleasure has in their lives.

As predicted, NFC moderates the impact of pleasure and meaning on subjective happiness differently for men and women. Men who have high NFC and who therefore structure and meaningfully reason about the situations in which they find themselves can derive more happiness from meaningful consumption than men who have low NFC. Analogously, women who have high NFC get less happiness from pleasurable consumption than women who have low NFC. These results empirically confirm the speculations made by Meyers-Levy and Loken (2015) about the NFC as a key predictor of gender-specific information processing strategies.

Perceived relative income positively affects short-term happiness, but not life satisfaction. Again, this result may be a consequence of the shift from a short- to a long-term assessment (see above) and may explain the inconsistencies in the existing research on income and happiness. When one thinks abstractly, life seems to be not only about money. Also, what matters in the relation between perceived relative income and happiness is not the absolute amount of money one makes, but the relative or subjective amount (i.e., as perceived in comparison to others).

Does “nature” or “nurture” explain the relationship between gender and happiness? When it comes to any gender differences, there are always two “end-point” explanations on a continuum of possible explanations: they may be evolutionarily determined (i.e., innate) or they may be socio-culturally determined. So, do women seek happiness and life satisfaction from meaningful experiences more than men, and do men seek happiness and life satisfaction from pleasurable experiences more than women because this is just a reflection of intrinsic predispositions or are these examples of “learned” gendered behaviors?

A possible explanation for the observed differences is that these they are a result of socialization. Social structures, institutions, and the different societal roles that women and men have traditionally held contribute to differences in behavior of the two genders. To a large extent, how women and men regard themselves has been shaped by cognitions attained in childhood and marked by then-current socio-culturally constructed exemplary “female” and “male” behaviors (Bem, 1974). Consequently, it is possible women caring on average more about personal fulfillment than men, and men more about pleasure than women, are examples of such “nurtured” behaviors.

In contrast to sociocultural explanations of consumer behavior, evolutionary theory (“nature”) suggests that if a specific behavior is stable across societies, it is probably evolutionarily determined (Tooby & Cosmides, 2005). Applied to the current study, if we were to find out that meaning and pleasure have a differential impact on female and male happiness and life satisfaction, and this distinction is stable across different cultures, it would be more probable that such differences were innate rather than socio-culturally constructed. We do not have cross-cultural data, however, to test this proposition. Still, and notwithstanding that our hypothesis linking pleasure and subjective happiness for the two genders (H4a) was not supported, some secondary evidence shows that the differential influences of meaning and of pleasure on happiness and life satisfaction of the two genders are more likely to be socio-culturally constructed than innate. We offer three reasons for this conjecture.

First, in contemporary Western societies, professional women still must negotiate their lives between their professional and family roles (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2009). Professional working mothers engage in the culturally prominent lifestyle known as “juggling” (Thompson, 1996). Because of juggling (and the lack of “me” time), consumed experiences hold specific meanings for working women. Jugglers “have been socialized in a common system of conflicting cultural ideals, beliefs, and gender ideologies” in a search for “meanings that arise in relation to [their] salient life concerns and their sense of personal history” (Thompson, 1996, p. 388). If this is the case, it could be that women, on average, prioritize personal fulfilment (i.e., meaning) more than men when consuming experiences. It could also be the case that daughters acquire this inclination from their mothers in childhood. Note that the gender differences in few aspects of psychological well-being that Roothman et al. (2003) observe are also in line with gender stereotypes and traditional socialization practices. Moreover, judging by the weak relation of pleasure and happiness for both genders in our sample, it could be the case than men in contemporary, increasingly gender equal Western societies are also socio-culturally conditioned to “neglect” pleasure. This conjecture is consistent with Eagly and Wood's (1999) convergence hypothesis. Applied to happiness and well-being, this predicts that men and women should become more similar in what makes them happy and increases their life satisfaction as traditional gender-based divisions in wage labor and domestic labor disappear. Contemporary Western men, like contemporary Western women, increasingly suffer from “juggling” lifestyle and an inability to “stop and smell the roses.”

Second, according to Baumeister et al. (2013), pleasure—as a balance of affect between pleasure and pain—is rooted in nature, whereas meaning is cultural. Evaluating the meaningfulness of an experience requires consumers to interpret culturally transmitted symbols to be able to assess the experience in relation to values and other meanings that also are learned from the culture (Baumeister et al., 2013).

Finally, our results echo the findings of Dennis et al. (2018) who studied gendered shopping styles. Note that shopping is an experience that our respondents listed (see Table 2). Dennis et al. show that women, when they shop, like the company of fellow shoppers and enjoy shopping as a social experience. Men, however, shop quickly. They prefer to shop alone because that makes shopping efficient and gets the job done. Importantly, women in our sample, in contrast to men, are more likely to recall communal than solitary experiences.

4.2 Managerial implications

The results of the present study are managerially relevant because they offer clues for creation and structuring of commercial experiences that would appeal to both genders. Consistent with the results of the present study, we argue that, to make customers happy, companies must be able to deliver predominantly meaningful experiences. Considering that women and men represent two very large segments, many companies cannot pick and choose between the two segments because this would mean a considerable loss of revenue. When they market an experience, companies must make sure that they offer cues and specific services that trigger personal fulfillment on their own. At the same time, it would be a good idea if companies also engage consumers' creativity and a sense of escapism to help consumers avoid overthinking the experience enabling them to momentarily “get lost” in it. To be sure, companies do these things. So, for every “chillaxing,” pleasurable moment of lounging at the pool or drinking champagne or eating delicacies at an opulent buffet, cruise companies, for example, also offer yoga, “self-discovery” meditation, unforgettable sunsets, and opportunities for self-growth by visiting historic sights and learning about them. In a way, the goal of companies is to make the experience they offer extraordinary. This recommendation is also consistent with the finding that what makes an experience extraordinary is its meaningfulness (Bhattacharjee & Mogilner, 2014).

Ads that promote experiences often utilize the idea that experiences give meaning and pleasure to customers. Going back to the cruise example, the imagery used in cruise ads shows small, pleasurable (consumption) moments (e.g., sunbathing, swimming in a massive pool, closeups of flowing champagne), but it often makes a point that cruise customers are also going through a meaningful, even transformative experience. Hence, sunsets on cruise ships are always enjoyed with a romantic partner, dancing classes taken during the cruise always make people younger, yoga classes make them forget about everyday responsibilities, and trips are always best enjoyed with children (if the ad is targeted at families). All these moments can be interpreted as personally fulfilling and meaningful.

Note that commercial experiences inevitably involve brands. A commercial experience that is meaningful and pleasurable may associatively boost meaning and pleasure of the brands that are part of the experience, increasing the overall brand happiness. Brand happiness, in turn, will positively affect brand-rated outcomes (e.g., repurchase intentions, willingness to pay premium, and spread word-of-mouth) (Schnebelen & Bruhn, 2018).

Finally, our results hint at the possibility that consumption of experiences, including brands in the experiences, may have a positive effect on consumers' long-term well-being, a finding echoed by Schmitt et al. (2015).

4.3 Future research

While the results of this study largely confirm the predictions about how consumption of experiences influences the pleasure and the personal fulfillment of female and male consumers, future research should further explore the reasons as to why women and men pursue happiness differently. For example, in their study of how individuals pursue happiness in general, Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) show that women typically boost their happiness by engaging in activities that require social interaction—maintaining relationships, helping others, going to movies with others, engaging in religious activities—and by pursuing career goals, attempting to reach full potential, or organizing life. Men, however, report that they are more likely to seek happiness though solitary activities such as working on hobbies, exercising, going to movies alone, and being absorbed in tasks that they enjoy doing. These findings are not only consistent with the evidence showing that women typically adopt an interdependent self–view whereas men adopt and an independent self-view (Lin & Raghubir, 2005), they are also consistent with our results. It could be the case that the happiness-pursuing activities that Tkach and Lyubomirsky (2006) identify as male-specific are more pleasurable whereas those that are female-specific are more meaningful. Future research should investigate if this is the case.

Future research should also look more closely at how NFC influences the pursuit of happiness of male consumers. This study did not predict that NFC would affect the relation between pleasure and happiness for men. Yet, when their NFC is high, men realize that pleasure matters for their in-the-moment happiness. Interestingly, NFC is positively correlated with masculine sex-role attitudes, perhaps because of the stereotype of men being rational (Osberg, 1987). At the same time, low NFC men seem to be more sensitive to hedonic information than high NFC men. It could be that a type of licensing effect operates here (Fitzsimons et al., 2007)—men's willingness to elaborate more about what makes them happy may give them a license to acknowledge that they care about pleasure. Therefore, men may not admit explicitly that pleasure equals happiness, but it is the men with high NFC who admit this more readily than men with low NFC. This result could be also context-specific—high NFC men admit the importance of pleasure in their pursuit of happiness because seeking happiness is a positive endeavor, unlike the prototypical “vice” behaviors that Fitzsimons et al. (2007) studied. More research is needed to resolve this issue.

In studying how gender influences consumption, researchers have drawn on Judith Butler's (1990) conceptualization that gender is something performed rather than possessed as an innate quality. In that sense, the fact that women care relatively more about personal fulfillment and men relatively more about pleasure in their respective pursuits of happiness could reflect the myths of femininity—women are self-sacrificing, modest, passive (Goulding & Saren, 2009)—, which perpetuate the socio-culturally constructed patriarchal order and which, in turn, could affect gendered happiness-pursuing strategies. On the other hand, women and men could be evolutionarily predisposed to seek happiness in different ways. To address this possibility, future research should attempt to replicate this study in different cultures and see if the results are consistent across the cultures.

When considering a possible influence of consumer age on the relationship between gender and happiness, our sample, due to its size and composition, cannot do justice to this question. Older people associate happiness with peacefulness, whereas younger people associate it with excitement (Mogilner et al., 2011). Could it be that peacefulness is related to meaning and excitement to pleasure? Future research can resolve this conundrum.

Finally, future research should shed more light on how income, subjective as well as objective, further moderates the relationship between gender and happiness. Van Boven. and Gilovich (2003) offer some preliminary evidence demonstrating that (objectively) richer people get more happiness from experiential purchases than from material purchases. Following up on our theory, it could be that women, still more than men, focus on meaning in their pursuit of happiness because they are more likely to economize between different consumption domains neglecting “frivolous” pleasure. Hence, it could be that a lack of material resources makes all consumers more women-like, conditioning them to look for meaning while avoiding “unnecessary” material pleasures. It could also be the case that more expensive experiences are more meaningful.

In conclusion, future consumer research should continue to treat happiness as being triggered in two different ways, as it was done here. This will provide a more nuanced picture of consumer happiness compared to the more general psychological research conducted before.