Retrospective evaluations of playful experiences

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to examine the impact of key affective moments of a playful experience on consumers’ overall retrospective evaluations. Design/methodology/approach The authors build on past literature on hedonic psychology and sequential preferences and link it to specific characteristics of playful experiences to derive their hypotheses. The hypotheses are tested through two field experiments conducted at a videogame arcade. Findings Results demonstrated that consumers’ overall evaluations are better aligned with the affective intensity at the final or end moment of a playful experience. Findings also revealed the complexity of understanding playful experiences, for it is the meaningfulness of end moments rather than simply their recent position in the experience that underlies overall evaluations. When end moments cease to be meaningful, the trough or least affective intense moment impacts overall evaluations. Practical implications This research has implications for marketers who are deciding on which point of a playful experience to concentrate their resources for optimizing evaluations. Originality/value This research contributes to literature on playful consumption by illuminating how consumers rely on affective moments of a playful experience to construct overall evaluations. Additionally, it highlights the important role of meaningfulness of end moments, a relatively underexplored process, which extends literature on key moments and retrospective evaluations.

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