From the Square One Shopping Center in Mississauga, Canada offering Art Auctions, to the Galerie des Galeries, in the famous Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, hosting year-long exhibitions of artworks by various visual artists, art is taking up residence in high end retail space across the world in recent years. The obvious hope is that art can function as a magnet to attract customers and to offer a unique competitive edge over rival shopping destinations. However, we found that these well-intentioned efforts may have some troubling negative consequences: Appreciating visual arts, ironically, decreases consumers’ desire for luxury consumption. This unexpected drop occurs because appreciating artworks elicits the feeling of self-transcendence, which reduces the status motivation that underlies the consumption of luxury goods. A series of field experiments demonstrated this effect and offered a possible solution for this paradox.
