Feature image credit: Mike B @ pexels
A quick look at Statista tells us that the Malaysian luxury cars market is projected to reach a revenue of US$0.78bn (RM3.5bn) in 2022. And that’s just this year. My, that’s a lot of luxury cars on our roads.
Cars are a necessity to get from point A to point B, especially in car-centric Malaysia. But a Myvi can take you to the grocery store as efficiently as an Audi can, so the luxury cars must serve another purpose, likely as positional goods. Cars are used to signal status.
Here comes the RM3.5billion question: do people who drive luxury cars actually enjoy their cars more?
According to a paper titled Why don’t we learn from poor choices? The consistency of expectation, choice, and memory clouds the lessons of experience by Norbert Shwarz and Jing Xu, it is more fun to think about driving a luxury car than to actually drive a luxury car.
The researchers instructed participants to rate their emotions while driving different cars on a scale from 1 to 10 (the participants didn’t actually drive all the cars; they just thought about driving the cars). As expected, the participants’ positive feelings increased with the value of the cars.
Next, another group of participants rated how they felt while driving their own car on a particular occasion. Only after that did the researchers ask about the car they drove.
The researchers concluded that the quality of the car was unrelated to the drivers’ affective experience. The car only matters when the driver thinks about the car they are driving. If their mind is preoccupied with the mundane details of life, the quality and attributes of the car make little difference. Often, it is the nature of the trip—are they driving to work or to a leisure event; are there screaming kids in the backseat—that gives bearing to their feelings, NOT the car.
So why is there a perception that driving a luxury car brings happiness? Why are people visiting luxury car showrooms in hordes? Perhaps they have never heard of Xu and Shwarz’s research.
When we consider the cold, hard numbers in a vacuum, the opportunity cost of owning a luxury car is glaring. Think of what you could do with that extra cash — buy a property, go on a nice holiday, or just put the money into a fund and let it grow.
But then again, some people are car enthusiasts who genuinely love cars, in which case buying property, going on a nice holiday, or letting the money sit in a fund has a higher opportunity cost (we all assign different values to different things). I respect that.
Maybe their occupation requires a certain image, and cars are convenient positional goods. They have to appear successful to actually become successful.
Or perhaps, they vehemently disagree with the findings of this research: No, driving a luxury car does spark joy!
Each point is perfectly valid. So you do you.
Chow Ping Lee is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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