Author(s)

Zining Peng, Maolin Ye

School of Management, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.

Experiential purchases refer to the purchase aiming to get life experience, while material purchases define the purchase made to acquire material possession. Both purchase types have different effects on happiness for the individual and experiential purchases which can make people feel happier and more joyful than material purchase. The reasons exist in the following five areas: firstly, as improved over time, experience is becoming better and better; secondly, experience has closer links with itself; what’s more, experiential purchase, instead of material purchase, will not arouse social comparison; fourthly, experience can meet the basic psychological needs of people, especially the relationship needs; last but not least, experience is easy to share.

Experiential Purchase, Material Purchase, Happiness

Peng, Z. and Ye, M. (2015) An Introduction of Purchase Types and Happiness. Journal of Service Science and Management, 8, 132-141. doi: 10.4236/jssm.2015.81016.