“Pets Make You Spend More!” Impact of Pet Ownership on Consumer Purchase Decisions

Abstract

Newswise — Pet ownership has become increasingly popular, making it important to understand whether and how it affects consumers’ purchase decisions. Using pet ownership as an exogenous shock, we employed a difference-in-differences (DID) method with propensity score matching (PSM) to estimate the effect of pet ownership on consumers’ purchases. We find that pet ownership increases purchases. A laboratory experiment reveals that this effect is induced by enhanced subjective well-being, which boosts impulsive hedonic purchases. Moreover, two follow-up studies show that higher level of emotional support from pet positively affects consumers’ subjective well-being, thus leading to increased purchases. This research is among the first to empirically examine how pet ownership affects consumer purchases. It contributes to understanding subjective well-being, impulsive purchases, and the emotional support pet provides. The findings offer valuable implications for retailers on incorporating pets into marketing and provide insights for e-commerce platforms to optimize personalized recommendation algorithms to boost purchases.