The motivations of conspicuous consumption in the digital age
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Conspicuous consumption (CC) is a phenomenon with tremendous significance to marketing theory, practice, and potentially, consumer welfare. Yet few studies have focused on the underlying reasons why individuals engage in CC. We characterize CC as being driven by a complex interplay of economic, psychological and social factors. Design/methodology/approach In Study 1 (n = 399), nine justifications were inspired from a review of the literature and operationalized with multi-item statements: snobbery, bandwagon, happiness, confidence, identity-building, distinctiveness, economic-scarcity, social-capital and quality. These nascent constructs were embedded within a nomological net of measures for pertinent individual-level characteristics (materialism, self-esteem and need-for-uniqueness), internally-held sociocultural values (vertical/horizontal dimensions of individualism-collectivism), social desirability bias, as well as two existing unidimensional scales for measuring behavioral aspects of CC. In Study 2, using a more representative sample (n = 393) we sought to replicate the CC dimensions and we investigated how these dimensions associate with social media (SM) use, SM motivations and SM addiction, alongside the constructs from Study 1. Findings In both studies 1 and 2, results empirically validated eight of the nine posited CC dimensions and corroborated many hypotheses regarding these motivations’ relationships with other constructs. We pinpointed which CC motivations are most strongly linked to CC behaviors, how these motivations are shaped by individual difference and sociocultural factors and whether and which CC motivations are exacerbated by SM use. Originality/value The CC scale allows for a finer-grained understanding of the complex nature of CC. The findings offer implications for segmentation, brand positioning and communication strategies, in terms of clarifying the various mechanisms behind CC and how these motivations are associated with different individual- and cultural- level characteristics. From a consumer welfare standpoint, the insights generated are useful for informing interventions to counteract potentially maladaptive consumer behaviors.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".