All That Twitters Is Not Gold: How Verbally Documenting or Reflecting During or After an Experience Can Affect Enjoyment

Social media and mobile technology now provide consumers with the opportunity to continuously document or reflect on their moment-to-moment internal and external experiences. For instance, "tweets" are often written while one is consuming some experience, just as other forms of social media may be used in their respective ways for documentation or reflection while an experience is unfolding. But what effect does verbal documentation or reflection have on consumers' enjoyment of their time? The authors propose that when consumers can verbally document or reflect about topics other than the current experience, increased mind wandering can occur, which can help lead to reduced enjoyment. Testing the theoretical model through five experiments, the authors show that verbal documentation or reflection during an experience can reduce enjoyment, regardless of whether that experience is generally enjoyable or generally unenjoyable. However, the same effect does not occur when consumers are specifically asked to verbally document or reflect only about the experience they are taking part in. Verbal documentation or reflection right after an experience ends, which does not increase mind wandering during the experience, can lead to increased enjoyment when consumers are specifically asked to verbally document or reflect only about the experience they just took part in. Implications for the use of social media for verbal documentation and reflection by consumers and marketing managers are discussed.