Choosing the Best Together: Joint Consumption Promotes Consumers' Maximizing Mindset

ABSTRACT A maximizing mindset, the tendency to seek the best choice through increased effort, plays a vital role in consumer decision‐making. While extensive research has explored the consequences of maximizing mindset on consumer behaviors, investigations into its antecedents remain nascent. Notably, consumption decisions often occur in either individual or joint contexts, which may influence consumers’ maximizing tendencies. In this study, we investigate the effect of consumption context—joint versus individual consumption—on consumers’ maximizing mindset. Through four studies using varying decision scenarios, we find that consumers in joint (vs. individual) consumption settings are more likely to adopt a maximizing mindset, evidenced by a preference for the “best” product and a choice for the larger choice set. This effect arises from perceived uncertainty regarding partners’ preferences. Such uncertainty heightens the feeling of anticipated guilt, which in turn fosters consumers’ maximizing mindset. Consistent with the serial mediation mechanism, we further uncover that this effect is attenuated when partners’ preferences are explicitly communicated or when the decision outcome is inconsequential. These findings not only advance the literature on maximizing mindset and joint consumption but also offer practical insights for improving the effectiveness of scene marketing.