Activity Engagement Purchases and Happiness

This research develops a new conceptual framework based on use intention for classifying purchases. Accordingly, it moves past the dominant material vs. experiential dichotomy as well as adding a third purchase type: activity engagement purchases, which are defined as purchases that support sustained consumer activities overtime. This new typology is empirically examined to understand how different purchase types contribute to consumer happiness. Activity engagement purchases emerge as a conceptually and empirically distinct type of purchase that consumers can readily classify and recall. Activity engagement purchases also generate greater happiness than material or experiential ones – which is found to be driven by their ability to fulfill consumers’ competency needs and facilitate value expression.