Consumers often schedule their activities in an attempt to more efficiently use their time. While the benefits of scheduling are well established, its potential downsides are not well understood.The authors examine if scheduling uniquely undermines the benefits of leisure activities. In thirteen studies using unambiguously leisure activities that are commonly scheduled by consumers (e.g., movies, a coffee break), they find that scheduling a leisure activity (vs.experiencing it impromptu) makes it feel less free-flowing and more work-like. Furthermore, scheduling diminishes utility from leisure activities, both in terms of excitement in anticipation of the activities as well as experienced enjoyment. Importantly, the authors find that maintaining the free-flowing nature of the activity by roughly scheduling (without pre-specified times) eliminates this effect, indicating that the effect is driven by a detriment from scheduling rather than a boost from spontaneity. The reported findings highlight an important opportunity for marketers to improve consumers' experiences and utility by leveraging scheduling behavior, while also providing important implications for consumer wellbeing from leisure consumption.
Advances in technology, particularly smartphones, have unlocked new opportunities for consumers to generate content about experiences while they unfold (e.g., by texting, posting to social media, writing notes), and this behavior has become nearly ubiquitous. The present research examines the effects of generating content during ongoing experiences. Across nine studies, the authors show that generating content during an experience increases feelings of immersion and makes time feel like it is passing more quickly, which in turn enhances enjoyment of the experience. The authors investigate these effects across a broad array of experiences both inside and outside the lab that vary in duration from a few minutes to several hours, including positive and negative videos and real-life holiday celebrations. They conclude with several studies testing marketing interventions that increase content creation and find that consumers who are incentivized or motivated by social norms to generate content reap the same experiential benefits as those who create content organically. These findings illustrate how leveraging content creation to improve experiences can mutually benefit marketers and consumers.
Consumers often organize their time by scheduling various tasks, but also leave some time unaccounted for. The authors examine whether ending an interval of unaccounted time with an upcoming task systematically alters how this time is perceived and consumed. Eight studies conducted in both the lab and field show that bounded intervals of time (e.g., an hour before a scheduled meeting) feel prospectively shorter than unbounded intervals of time (e.g., an hour with nothing scheduled subsequently). Furthermore, consumers perform fewer tasks and are less likely to engage in relatively extended (though feasible) tasks during a bounded compared to an unbounded interval of time—even in the face of financial incentives. Finally, making a longer task easier to separate into subtasks attenuates this effect.
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