The Enjoy-Able Effect: Consumer Enjoyment Inflates Self-Evaluations of Ability

This research takes a novel approach to a central aspect of marketing, consumer enjoyment, by exploring the consequences (rather than antecedents) of enjoyment during consumption activities. Eight primary studies (four preregistered) and five supplementary studies in the web appendix (N = 5,106) document how enjoyment can bias consumers’ self-evaluations of ability and subsequently affect their consumption behaviors. Across more than 100 activities and several different types of enjoyment (e.g., experienced, anticipated, and relative), enjoyment of an activity inflates consumers’ self-evaluations of ability at it, leading them to act more like self-perceived experts. This enjoy-able effect is driven by consumers’ (over)reliance on a lay theory about the relationship between enjoyment and ability, which leads to a robust better-than-average effect for enjoyable activities. That is, consumers draw self-inferences about their relevant abilities from their enjoyment even when their actual ability and enjoyment are unrelated or negatively related. Taken together, this work documents a previously unexplored role of enjoyment in consumer behavior, identifies a novel antecedent to consumers’ subjective expertise, and demonstrates the impact of a new lay theory on consumer judgment. Theoretical and managerial implications for these findings as they pertain to better-than-average biases, consumer welfare, and gamification are discussed.