The Employee Experience Advantage

We All Care about Experience (Introduction)

Life is short, very short. We might as well make the most of it while we have it. This is why so many of us want to explore the world, try new things, and otherwise venture off the beaten path, because as humans we are by nature curious. This is also why many of us focus on creating experiences instead of simply owning material things. We save up to eat at fancy restaurants on special occasions, go skydiving, visit exotic cities thousands of miles away from where we live, climb mountains, and do all sorts of other experiential activities. Nobody makes us do these things; we do them because we want to, all for the sake of getting that experience that will hopefully last us a long time or a lifetime. Most people don't stop to think about it, but experiences are really one of the main things that make us human.

Research done by Cornell University psychology professor Dr. Thomas Gilovich, University of Chicago postdoctoral research fellow Dr. Amit Kumar, and Dr. Matthew Killingsworth, who studies human happiness at the University of California, San Francisco, found that when people spend their money on experiences, over time their satisfaction goes up whereas when people spend money on physical things, over time their satisfaction goes down. The research also found that waiting for an experience elicits more happiness than waiting for a material good. Finally, they found when we spend money on experiences, those purchases are also more associated ...