How power increases preference for experiential purchases but not for material purchases

Abstract While recent research indicates that experiential purchases lead to greater happiness than material purchases (i.e., experiential advantage), we have a limited understanding of when and why consumers prefer experiential purchases. In this paper, we address this topic and find that consumers' feelings of power play a significant role in their preference for experiential purchases. Across four experimental studies, using multiple manipulations and stimuli, we demonstrate that feelings of high (vs. low) power lead to increased consumer preference for experiential, but not material, purchases. Mediation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) analyses revealed that this phenomenon is driven by greater expected happiness from experiential purchases for consumers feeling high (vs. low) power. We contribute to the experiential purchase literature by identifying consumer power as an important antecedent of consumers' preference for experiences and also add to the consumer power literature by documenting how perceived power affects consumer evaluations and decision‐making. Furthermore, our paper suggests that managers should target people in powerful positions or seek to facilitate feelings of greater power in potential customers when marketing experiential products.