“Pets make you spend more!” Impact of pet ownership on consumer purchase decisions

Abstract

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.