Humans have always found ways to flaunt how they spend money. In studying this conspicuous consumption behavior, researchers have focused almost exclusively on one particular target of consumption—material goods that are bought and physically owned. Here, we propose that a different, understudied target of conspicuous consumption—experiential purchases—offers unique social signaling value compared to material goods. Across experimenter-derived stimuli (Study 1a) and real-world instances of conspicuous consumption scraped from Instagram (Study 1b), we find that conspicuous experiences can convey status equivalently to, while simultaneously signaling warmth better than, conspicuous material purchases. This communal advantage is driven by higher levels of perceived intrinsic motivation afforded to conspicuous experiences (Study 2) and is only present when the experiences are consumed by others (Study 3). These findings broaden our understanding of status-based consumption processes and position conspicuous experiences as signaling tools with unique social features and value.
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