To buy for whom? The effects of money’s pride and surprise tag on spending behaviors

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the interesting but largely unexamined effects of pride-tagged money and surprise-tagged money on consumers’ spending and product-choosing behaviors.Design/methodology/approachThe present research utilizes experimental design and survey methods to collect data and the ANOVA and bootstrap analysis methods to verify the assumed hypotheses.FindingsStudy 1 shows that people with pride-tagged (vs surprise-tagged) money are more likely to spend the money for themselves (vs others) and the personal achievement-expression motive plays a mediating role between the pride-tagged money and self-spending behavior. Study 2 replicates the findings of Study 1 and suggests that people with pride-tagged money are less likely to spend the money for others (e.g. donating). Study 3 shows that people with pride-tagged (surprise-tagged) money are more likely to purchase a self-relevant (other-relevant) product than those with surprise-tagged (pride-tagged) money.Practical implicationsThe current research has classified products into self-relevant products (e.g. fitness card, supermarket gift card and mobile game equipment) and other-relevant products (e.g. restaurant set meal, pizza, movie ticket and hot pot) on the basis of perceived self-relevance on the products. Therefore, marketers could frame certain conditions that elicit self-relevant versus other-relevant choices and manipulate self-relevant versus other-relevant primes to shift preferences in favor of certain options. For example, around graduation time, graduates often feel proud of their accomplishments. In this case, marketers could take advantage of that feeling with a message like “treat yourself”, which could prompt them to spend more money for themselves. In addition, the marketers selling other-relevant products (e.g. pizza and hot pot) might develop and promote advertisements that deliver information about “sharing with your friends”. For example, in 2016, Pizza Hut began to use its new slogan of “love to share” to convey the idea of “double happiness as a result of sharing”.Originality/valueFrom a theoretical standpoint, first, this research contributes to the emotional accounting research by advancing the notion that money associated with different positive feelings could influence consumers’ spending behaviors in different ways. Second, the research distinguishes self-relevant products from other-relevant products. Third, it shows that people with pride-tagged money and those with surprise-tagged money have different preferences for products. Self-relevant products, such as fitness card, supermarket gift card and mobile game equipment, that represent a certain degree of independence are more used and/or consumed by consumers with pride-tagged money, whereas other-relevant products, such as restaurant set meal, pizza, movie ticket and hot pot, that involve the perceptions of interdependence are more bought by consumers with surprise-tagged money to share with others.