Extraverts Perceive Purchases More Experientially and Attain Greater Happiness from Them

People gain more happiness from experiential than material purchases. Interestingly, research has shown that planned interventions encouraging consumers to perceive the same purchase more experientially also yield a happiness benefit. The present investigation takes a novel perspective and examines whether there are identifiable individual characteristics that make people naturally prone to perceiving purchases more experientially, and whether this too produces a happiness benefit. We document six studies and five conceptual replications (N=3472) showing that extraversion leads people to perceive purchases more experientially, which in turn increases purchase-related happiness. This unfolds for extraversion but not for other major personality traits. Furthermore, borrowing from the notion that extraversion is malleable, we manipulate extraversion and find convergent effects of state extraversion, a managerially relevant finding. Additionally, we identify need for uniqueness as a psychological mechanism behind extraverts’ tendency to perceive purchases more experientially. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.