Temporary or permanent social media post? The impact of product type

Abstract Consumers share various content about material and experiential products on social media for short‐term via temporary posts or long‐term via permanent posts. Based on memory protection and hedonic adaptation theories, this study investigates whether product type determines how long consumers display their products on social media. We suggest experiential products elicit more proactive nostalgia —the desire to have a permanent record of a current episode to remember and relive it in the future—than material products do encouraging long‐term product displays on social media. We conducted five experiments. Results demonstrate the following: (a) consumers are more likely to share experiential (vs. material) products via permanent (vs. temporary) posts on social media (Study 1 and 2); (b) consumers tend to share permanent posts when products are (externally or internally) framed as experiential versus material (Study 3 and 4); and (c) proactive nostalgia (for oneself and about others) mediates the relationship between product type and product display duration on social media (Study 4 and 5). Findings elucidate how product type and proactive nostalgia influence product engagement on social media and suggest managers can utilize product display duration as a product valuation metric and proactive nostalgia as a facilitator of long‐term word‐of‐mouth.