Consumers’ minimum time investments in meaningful consumption

Consumer well-being involves not only the pursuit of pleasure, but also the pursuit of meaning. However, little is known about how people perceive the costs and benefits of meaning- versus pleasure-oriented experiences. We find that compared to pleasure-oriented experiences, people expect meaning-oriented experiences to be more satisfying after meeting a minimum time investment (i.e., the perceived minimum amount of time needed to derive benefits from consumption; study 1). As a consequence, people choose to prolong their exposure to meaningful (vs. pleasurable) experiences following interruptions (study 2). We discuss the implications of minimum time investments for firms’ relationships with consumers and marketing communication design (web appendix ).