Consumer Psychology Lessons from The Science of Funeral Spending
What research insights about funeral spending and consumer psychology:
Funeral spending is a form of relational spending - a specific type of consumer psychology focused on purchasing goods and services for a loved one
It differs greatly from typical forms of relational spending given that it departs from the dyadic relationship between the gift-giver and the recipient
Caring is a strong motive that underlies funeral planning for a loved one
Caring manifests as a) balancing preferences, b) incurring personal sacrifices, and c) the amount spent on the funeral
There are 2.6 million deaths in the United States each year, and the average cost of a funeral is about $7,200, very often even exceeding $10,000. Existing research has explored the meaning of the funeral from a sociological perspective, in terms of the social function they provide friends and families. But an interesting, yet overlooked aspect of funerals is the complex decision-making that goes behind planning such a big event.
In the world of consumer psychology, funerals can be characterized as a form of relational spending—purchasing goods and services for a loved one. However, funerals are very different from other instances of relational spending, such as gift-giving, because they involve one-time, highly emotional, uncomfortable, and expensive decisions with no scope for repurchasing or reciprocating. The most distinctive difference between funerals and other forms of relational spending is that funerals do not directly, materially benefit the recipient. Hence, they have no impact on the relationship between the gift-giver and the recipient, and so, typical drivers of relational spending may not apply to funeral spending.
In light of the marketization of the funeral industry, renowned researchers Sarah Whitley, Ximena Garcia-Rada, Fleura Bardhi, Dan Ariely, and Carey K. Morewedge examined funerals from the perspective of the person planning the funeral. Their 2021 study identifies motives that drive and manifest in funeral planning decisions.
Methodology: Qualitative Interviews to Understand Funeral Spending
Long interviews with people who had planned a funeral were conducted to capture the experience of funeral planning and decision-making from their perspective. This allowed the researchers to probe for consumer motivations along with consumer choices (caskets, venues, attendees). This approach enabled an analysis of the expectations from prior literature and the ability to explore new ideas inductively.
Results and Implications of Funeral Spending on Marketing Psychology
Caring Orientation as a Driver of Funeral Planning: The analysis suggests that the main driver of funeral planning is a caring orientation––feelings and actions of responsibility for the enhancement of the wellbeing of others.
In typical caregiving contexts, care is focused on enhancing and ensuring the physical well-being of recipients. In a funeral planning context, care is focused on enhancing and ensuring the meta-physical well-being (i.e., legacy) of the deceased, along with the physical and emotional well-being of the surviving family and community.
This caring manifests as:
A balancing act between the preferences of the deceased, the surviving family, the caregiver, and prescriptions of the traditional ritual script.
Personal sacrifice through extensive decision-making and emotional labor that goes into planning the funeral and managing the social dynamics around it. This results in substantial time, emotional, cognitive, and financial sacrifices in the effort to care for the deceased.
Amount of money spent on the funeral; an “appropriate amount” that would honor the deceased is required.
This research studies and provides insight into a unique yet ubiquitous consumer. By understanding caring and how it manifests in the end-of-life context where typical relationship motives are absent, provides insight into the evolving funeral industry.
Further, this work makes important contributions to the stream of work on the psychology of rituals. Theoretically, ritual ceremonies are highly normative and one would expect that rituals should be relatively straight-forward to plan if one follows existing cultural and religious scripts. However, with their increased marketization funeral choices are highly complex with major familial, financial, social, and identity implications.
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