Seeking Solitude: An Examination of the Motivational Underpinnings of Solitary Experiences
Abstract
Solitary consumers are a growing presence in the marketplace, and businesses in the experiential consumption space are adapting their offering to cater to them. Yet the marketing literature has remarkably little to say about solitary experiences, and what it does say suggests that solitary experiences should be unappealing. Drawing on examinations of solitude in psychology, I posit that differences in happiness between solitary and social experiences reported by extant work are attributable to differences in the motivations underlying each experience type. In a series of studies employing qualitative and experimental methodologies, I elucidate the role that motivation for solitude plays in solitary experiential consumption. In Study 1, I conceptualize motivation for solitude as separate from motivation for the focal activity and outline the diverse functions of solitude in driving and supporting consumers’ motivated solitary experiences. In Studies 2 and 3, I highlight asymmetries in motivations that contribute to greater social (vs. solitary) experience happiness. Specifically, I find that consumers’ pursuit of solitary experiences is less intrinsically motivated and more amotivated than their pursuit of social experiences, and that this difference in motivational composition accounts for the reported difference in happiness. In Study 4, I identify opportunity cost considerations as a barrier to motivated solitary experiences and find that even consumers who are highly motivated to seek solitude consider the costs of forgoing a social experience. The implication of these findings is that research in marketing comparing solitary and social experiential purchases without accounting for motivational differences is examining more than the impact of the presence or absence of social others. Theoretically, this perspective uncovers a new dimension of consumption that has previously been overlooked: motivated solitary consumption.