Consumption Effort: The Mental Cost of Generating Utility and the Role of Consumer Energy Level in Ambitious Consumption

Abstract

We propose that the essence of consumption is the mental process of generating utility from products, that this process expends consumption effort, and that consumers take consumption effort into account in their decision making. In 2 studies, we tested the hypothesis that consumption preferences become more ambitious—individuals become more inclined to choose challenging‐to‐consume products—when consumer energy levels are elevated. In Study 1, energy induced by ingesting caffeine increased participants’ tendency to choose subtitled foreign movies rather than domestic remakes of those same movies. Study 2 demonstrated the same effect with naturally occurring energy levels and with consumption experiences whose effortfulness and quality were varied independently. In choosing among sets of poems to read, participants with higher levels of energy exhibited less effort aversion but neither more nor less quality seeking. A reanalysis of Study 1 showed that the energy effect is not simply a case of consumers using more energy when they have more energy, because the energy effect disappeared when participants were made aware of the energy source, suggesting that a preference‐correction process occurred. The energy dependence of consumer preferences affords tactical opportunities for marketers, but the welfare implications for consumers are intriguingly unclear, because in both studies we found that energy increased participants’ choice of challenging consumption experiences without increasing their liking of those experiences.