The Paradox of Enjoyment in Luxury Consumption: Exploring Young Women's Expected and Actual Enjoyment of Luxury Goods

Abstract

Does luxury consumption bring enjoyment, as various media messages, especially advertisements, suggest? This research investigates the anticipated and experienced enjoyment associated with the use of luxury goods. We propose that anticipated and actual use of luxury goods have different effects on enjoyment, which we refer to as the paradox of enjoyment in luxury consumption. In the first study, the majority of women (74.8%) believed that using a luxury handbag (vs. an ordinary handbag) would contribute to a higher level of enjoyment/happiness. Our second study showed that imagined use of a luxury handbag led to greater enjoyment than imagined use of an ordinary handbag. Conversely, the results of the third study showed that the actual use of a luxury handbag reduced enjoyment, driven by an increase in feelings of inauthenticity. The results of the fourth study confirmed this mechanism using a different luxury brand. Furthermore, we found that the actual use of a luxury handbag increased enjoyment, but only among individuals with high levels of brand engagement in self-concept. Overall, the results show that young women's expected enjoyment of using a luxury product does not consistently match their actual emotional experience.