Abstract: Based on the perspective of anticipated happiness, three studies were conducted to confirm the influence of individual's orientation to happiness ( OTH) on purchase type preference, and also verify the mediating role of long-term utility concern. Study 1 found that compared with hedonic OTH, eudemonic OTH can lead consumers to pay more attention to the long utility of products and future self, in turn to enhance the preferences of material products. In addition, purchase preference is manifested not only in the financial cost input to the product ( study 1A) , but also in the time cost input to the product (study IB). This effect is robust even after controlling the purchase objectives ( study 2). However, when experiential products also provide long-term utilities, the effect of OTH on purchase type preference will be weakened ( study 3).

Key words:  , orientations to happiness , long-term utility , temporal self , material purchase , experiential purchase