When ‘Buy Experiences, Not Stuff’ Backfires: Why Life Goals and Motivation Matter

Experiential consumption is often promoted as more beneficial for well‐being than material consumption, yet this perspective may be overly simplistic because it overlooks individual differences in life goals and consumption motivation. Drawing on self‐determination theory, the present study proposed a motivational model examining whether intrinsic and extrinsic life goals are associated with autonomous and controlled motivation for experiential consumption and whether these motivations are related to basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration. A total of 1409 responses were collected from participants in Western societies (United Kingdom and United States) and East Asian societies (Hong Kong, Macao, mainland China, South Korea and Taiwan), with 1324 retained in the final analytical sample. The proposed model was tested using structural‐after‐measurement modelling (SAM) after establishing cross‐group measurement invariance. Results showed that the extrinsic pathway of experiential consumption was supported across both samples: extrinsic life goals were positively associated with controlled motivation, which in turn was positively associated with need frustration and the corresponding indirect association was also significant. The intrinsic pathway, by contrast, was fully supported only in the Western sample. Although intrinsic life goals were significantly and positively associated with autonomous motivation in both samples, autonomous motivation was associated with need satisfaction only in the Western sample and not in the East Asian sample, as was the corresponding indirect association. Overall, the findings contribute to experiential consumption research by showing that the negative motivational pathway associated with experiential consumption may be more robust than the positive one, calling into question the common assumption that experiential consumption is inherently positively linked to well‐being. Instead, the well‐being implications of experiential consumption appear to depend on what individuals value in life and why they engage in such consumption. Practically, the findings suggest that recommendations promoting experiential consumption should consider consumers' life goals and consumption motivation rather than assume that it is uniformly psychologically beneficial.