Putting ‘Time’ Back in “Me-Time”: Exploring the Relationships between Time Perceptions, Self-Gifting, and Well-Being

Abstract

Consumers are increasingly being encouraged to engage in consumption with the specific intention of improving their own emotional well-being (called “self-gifting consumption”). As a result, the market around self-care and self-gifting has been growing over the last several years. At the same time, however, consumers are also experiencing what has been called a “time famine,” or the sense of not having enough time to accomplish what they need or want to do. Leveraging the academic literatures on self-gifting consumption and time perceptions, this dissertation explores this tension, its psychological underpinnings, and possible solutions. Specifically, two essays explore antecedents of consumer interest in self-gifting, consequences of engaging in self-gifting, and the role of time perceptions in shaping these relationships.Essay 1 examines the role of perceived time availability in driving consumers’ attitudes toward “self-gifting appeals,” or marketing appeals that communicate the intention to improve one’s emotional well-being through the purchase or consumption of a given offering. Six studies reveal that perceiving time as more (vs. less) abundant leads consumers to resonate more with self-gifting appeals, compared to when the same offerings are positioned in other ways. This occurs because perceived time abundance triggers a heightened sense of contentment—a positive, emotion-like state of feeling complete, and characterized by a desire to focus on one’s emotions—which, in turn, increases attitudes towards appeals that involve a personal, emotional focus (as with self-gifting appeals).Turning from antecedents to consequences, Essay 2 tests whether engaging in a brief self-gifting experience provides emotional well-being benefits, whether consumers can correctly intuit this outcome, and the potential moderating role of time perceptions. Four studies demonstrate that, despite consumers’ expectations that time scarcity will hamper their ability to derive emotional benefit from self-gifting experiences, time- scarce consumers in fact derive amplified emotional well-being boosts, relative to time- abundant consumers. In addition to improving emotional well-being, self-gifting experiences can also expand one’s sense of available time, particularly for the time-scarce.Overall, this dissertation contributes to the literatures on time perceptions, self- gifting, affective forecasting, and consumer well-being and has implications for the role that consumption and marketing can play in improving consumers’ lives.