'Death Anxiety' Influences Consumers Who Could Save Money by Overcoming Fears of Death

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Conquering anxiety about death could help people save thousands of dollars on expensive end-of-life products and services. Marketing researchers at the University of Arkansas have found that contemplating death and considering the important decisions to be made at the end of one’s life can empower families as responsible consumers and prevent them from spending more money than they want to on funerals or memorial services.

“If you can get people to plan ahead, that reduces the chances they’ll get ripped off,” said Steven Kopp, associate professor of marketing at the UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business.

Kopp said even experts in his field — consumer marketing — are not immune to a resistance to thinking about death, so he and Swinder Janda, a UA alumnus and associate professor at Kansas State University, decided to study how feelings about death influence decisions about purchasing end-of-life products and services. They wanted to discover how different levels of “death anxiety,” defined as “an unpleasant emotional state precipitated by contemplation of one’s own death,” affect consumer behavior. Specifically, Kopp and Janda sought to understand the relationship between a person’s self-assessment of health and involvement with decisions such as purchasing a casket or opting for cremation.

“People walk around all the time, every day, being afraid of dying,” Kopp said. “Some of this has to carry over into consumption. It affects our behavior on some level.”

To prepare for a broader study, the researchers used results from a preliminary survey of 305 people to explore consumption behavior as it relates to purchasing end-of-life products and services. They discovered that people with lower levels of death anxiety are generally inclined to make quicker, simpler and more economical purchasing decisions about end-of-life products. In other words, people who are relatively less anxious about death are not as concerned about purchasing elaborate burials and caskets, and are not willing to spend as much time and effort shopping for such products.

The researchers also identified factors that influence degrees of death anxiety. They discovered that people who perceive themselves to be healthy will experience low levels of death anxiety. In addition, those who perceive themselves to have more control over their own health will also be less anxious about death. Furthermore, Kopp and Janda found that current health status plays a greater role in influencing death anxiety for younger people. For older people, self-assessment of how much control they have over their own health plays a greater role in influencing death anxiety.

Kopp said several funeral-industry and consumer-advocate studies fuel additional questions that he and Janda hope to answer. One national survey reported that three out of four consumers believe that prearranging for the disposition of their remains upon death made good sense. Yet only one out of every four had actually made such plans. Another study stated that for most consumers the purchase of a funeral and its related merchandise will be the third most expensive purchase of one’s life following the purchase of a house and an automobile.

Kopp emphasized that there is little systematic assessment of the effectiveness of governmental or consumer-oriented programs meant to inform people about pre-planning and death-care alternatives.

“Nearly all people in the United States will be involved in some type of end-of-life purchase decision,” Kopp said, “But funeral-related purchases are generally made without prior knowledge of needs, requirements, costs, or available alternatives. These decisions are also made under substantial time pressures and during times when the buyer is in a state of emotional vulnerability.”

Kopp said a resistance to thinking about death is probably responsible for the lack of rigorous, thorough research on consumer attitudes and behavior about purchasing end-of-life products and services.

“In marketing, we often talk about products people generally do not shop for,” he said. “Sometimes this is because they just don’t think about it, and sometimes it’s because they don’t want to think about it. So, we are trying to identify some consumer characteristics that would be related to peoples’ purchases of death-related products and services.”