Celebrate or Commemorate? A Material Purchase Advantage When Honoring Special Life Events

Special life events (e.g., graduations, promotions) are rare and meaningful. Consumers often honor these events with a purchase—either a celebratory experience or a commemorative material item. The authors propose that marking special life events with a material purchase provides a stronger connection to the past special event, allowing consumers to be transported back to their positive emotions experienced at the time of the event. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate this material advantage, while studies 3A–3C show that consumers’ predictions run counter to this finding, leading them to choose celebrations over commemorations. Studies 4 and 5 explore this misprediction and demonstrate that when consumers were encouraged to think about permanence, they more accurately forecasted a material advantage and were more likely to choose material purchases over experiences. The results suggest a potential exception to the widely accepted experiential advantage, while providing important implications for how purchases contribute to meaningfulness in life.