Abstract

Do we pursue more experiences and material things? Or do we pursue more than others, even if it is absolutely less? This study aimed to examine the influence of individual characteristics on the choice of experiences and material things from the perspective of maximization, which is an individual characteristic. A total of 94 subjects (60 males) participated in this study via Amazon MTurk. The results of the study showed that when it was related to experiences such as vacation periods, the place where the subjects wanted to live and the world they predicted to be happy were consistent, whereas in the case of material possessions such as luxury cars, there was a significant difference between the world where the subjects wanted to live and the world where they predicted to be happy. Furthermore, in relation to consumers’ vacation periods and car ownership, based on the consumer’s individual characteristics of maximization and the previous finding that consumers regret purchasing material products, we used multiple regression analysis to examine how consumers’ choices of vacation periods and the number of cars they owned were affected by their regret tendency. The results showed that subjects’ choices (where they wanted to live) for material products such as car ownership were positively related to consumers’ regret tendency, and the higher the regret tendency, the more they preferred world B, which was absolutely superior. In addition, the high standard and alternative search dimension, which are sub-dimensions of maximization tendency, were found to have marginally significant effects on the subjects' choices between the relative world and the absolute world. However, in the choice of vacation period related to experience, maximization tendency did not have significant effects, and only regret tendency had a negative effect.