The Joy of Shopping: Thrill of the Treasure Hunt

People sometimes enjoy the thrill of the hunt, which implies search can generate joy in addition to costs. Some customers say they enjoy searching for unique items such as vintage T-shirts and luxury handbags, and managers at warehouse stores, thrift stores, and many online selling platforms say they design their store format to offer a treasure hunt experience. We develop a model in which customers enjoy searching for a treasure. Our model’s search utility function includes a term based on the treasure’s net value, a term based on the instantaneous likelihood of discovering treasure, and a constant term reflecting other factors such as social aspects of shopping and customers’ enthusiasm level for the product category. We derive the optimal product price and treasure hunt difficulty level. In equilibrium, for products with either very low or very high value, customers’ utility from visiting the store comes primarily from the thrill of the hunt. This paper was accepted by Raphael Thomadsen, marketing. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2024.08105 .