For three decades, the most reliable advice in consumer research has been to spend on experiences, not things. The logic is familiar: the memory of the trip lasts longer than the enjoyment of the gadget; The pleasure of having fades faster than doing something. A study from Clemson University published in European Journal of Marketing this year complicates that picture—not by reversing it, but by introducing a third category that neither side of the debate considers.
The study, led by Associate Professor Anastasia Tiroff with co-author Matthew Hawkins of France’s Burgundy Business School, introduces what she and co-author Matthew Hawkins call “action token purchases”: spending to provide an ongoing experience, not to own an object or experience a peak moment. Running shoes were used for training. A constantly played instrument. A class that builds skills over months. In six studies involving hundreds of participants, this category produced higher levels of happiness than traditional material possessions or experiential spending.
The third category
The distinction Thyroff draws is not about whether something is physical or digital, tangible or intangible. It’s about intent. An action task purchase is made to serve something that the buyer plans to continue doing. Temporal size is the defining feature: not the point of purchase. It is the point of what the purchase enables over time.
This shifts the important question from what you bought to what you still do with it. Almost all online product content is built around the first question. Research shows that the latter predicts whether a purchase will actually deliver what buyers hope for.
Why “experiments beat all” was only half the answer
The experience-advantage finding that dominated the field for three decades was not wrong. Experiences create more lasting happiness than comparable material goods. But the Clemson study suggests that the relevant variable was never really “thing versus experience.” It was whether the acquisition allowed for something going on.
A one-off experience creates what Thyroff, using Aristotle, calls hedonic happiness: the pleasure associated with a moment. Action task buying and selling creates eudaimonia when it works—the satisfaction that comes from becoming something over time, from being proficient in an experience, from expressing value through repeated activity. They are not the same type of happiness and are not interchangeable.
What this means for how products are written
Product content – reviews, summaries, recommendation guides – is built around the purchase decision. Writing begins at the point of evaluation and ends at the point of acquisition. Clemson research shows that this is where the really important story about a product begins.
The purchases that people report as the most meaningful are the ones that disappear because of how they live. A chef whose knives have become part of everyday experience. A runner who associates his shoes with a change in how he spends his mornings. This is not the content of a product review. This is the content of a different article about products – positioning the object as an entry point into practice rather than as the end point of a transaction.
For anyone who writes about products with the goal of being useful rather than effective at the point of purchase, this finding is harder to ignore than it seems. The most accurate question to ask about almost any product is not whether it is worth buying. It’s whether it’s worth living with.
