More Possessions Can Make Consumers Less Happy

This research challenges a central tenet of consumerism—the widespread belief that owning more (e.g., more clothes, another TV, or another car) is more satisfying than owning less. We posit and show in the lab and the field that even though consumers prefer to own more goods, ironically, they can be more satisfied owning less. This occurs with contrasting possessions— goods that fulfill similar consumption functions with each good perceived as better than the other on important dimensions. Owning more contrasting possessions can induce an upward shift in the comparison standards that consumers use to assess their satisfaction with the possessions, making each of the goods appear deficient and, thus, causing owning more to feel less satisfying than owning less. Further supporting the proposed mechanism, we show that chronic individual differences in cognitive style and in evaluative tendency moderate the negative effect of owning more on satisfaction. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical contributions, managerial implications, and transformative insights for consumers.