Status And Conspicuous Consumption Tendency: Medinating Role Of Self-esteem

The phenomenon of conspicuous consumption is becoming more and more prevalent in China. But researches about how this phenomenon was developed were quite rare in China. Few articles in economics and sociology focused on criticizing it. In fact, it is not rational to just take conspicuous consumption as a luxury living pattern and make some criticism on it. In addition to the negative aspects such as render reference group members'jealousy, lower their subjective well being and happiness, waste and destroy natural resources, and cause negative impact on social values, there were also some positive functions, for example, taking conspicuous consumption as a way to repair self-threat, enhancing one's self-esteem, etc. There were much more literatures on this phenomenon in westerns society than in China. However, eastern cultural values and social system are quite different from westerns; consumers from different societies may show quite different attitudes and behaviors when confronting same product or brand. Therefore, it's necessary to explore how conspicuous consumption was developed in Chinese context.The mechanism among status, self-esteem and conspicuous consumption tendency was carefully examined through correlation, regression analysis and ANOVA after five experiments and five surveys, several interesting findings were revealed in the research.The major findings related to the interaction mechanism among status, self-esteem and conspicuous consumption tendency:status has positive effects on self-esteem and conspicuous consumption tendency (study 1 and 2), simultaneously, individuals' self-esteem has positive effects on their interest in conspicuous consumption. This logic tend to support the notion that self-esteem play mediation role between status and conspicuous consumption tendency, namely, high-status individuals'high self-esteem drove their willingness to spend on conspicuous items. Actually, this argument was further supported by survey data analysis. As for Chinese consumers, those conclusions seem sustain that individuals'motivations for conspicuous products were not compensating for feelings of inferiority or to repair the self which widely argued by western researchers, but signaling their good qualities to others.Several other interesting findings of the research were as follows:firstly, Chinese individuals'status positively correlated with their interest in conspicuous consumption. Specifically, study 1a shows that individuals'discretionary income per month has positive effect on conspicuous consumption tendency whatever it was measured through conspicuous items or through scales. Study 1b revealed that respondents who imagined that they owned high status show higher willingness to pay for conspicuous product (sunglasses) than participants who assigned in control condition, but this difference is not so significant. Further, adopting power manipulation which wildly use by western researchers, study 1c demonstrated that respondents in high power condition (vs. low power condition) show higher desire for conspicuous items (e.g. name-brand clothes, handbag, sunglasses, etc.), and participants in two conditions show no difference on functional goods (e.g. microwave, washer, table lamp, etc.).This finding is contrary to westerns'which argue that status—whatever it was measured by income or power manipulation—is negatively correlated with individual's status or position in their society. Although the finding diverges from conclusions based on research conducted in Western societies, they do help to explain several findings regarding the economic situation in China. The Chinese per capita GDP rank extremely low in the world and the income inequality is markedly increasing. At the same time, China has already replaced the United States as the world's second largest luxury goods market. Still, China doesn't have the U.S. severe household debts problems. This situation seems to imply that it is mostly the high-status people that spend on expensive luxury items and that low-status people maintain a relatively modest consumption pattern and do not spend much on unnecessary things (e.g. conspicuous goods). Our studies show that, in China, interest in conspicuous consumption and status indeed tends to go together. Discrepancy between Chinese and Western consumers was explored in study Id. This study seems supported that Chinese traditional cultural values, especially Confucian's "status and behavior congruency" values can explain some variance.Secondly, this research found that self-esteem has positive effect on conspicuous consumption tendency. Study 3a revealed positive effect of self-esteem on conspicuous consumption tendency. However, feedback effect of conspicuous consumption on self-esteem was not found in study 3b. That evidence supported self-esteem is a positive antecedent of conspicuous consumption. Our finding related to relationship between self-esteem and conspicuous consumption was also opposite to conclusion from American scholars which argued that lowered self-esteem induced high desire for conspicuous items.Our research also examined mediating effect of status concern between income and conspicuous consumption tendency, results showed that high-income (verse low-income) respondents tend to concern more on their relative status, this drive their willingness to pay on conspicuous items.Finally, relationship between status and self-esteem is consistent with westerns conclusions, high-status individuals inclined to report high self-esteem.Implications of the above finding were as follows:in macro-level, in order to deal with low-status individuals'jealousy, sense of inequality and hatred of the rich, government departments should impose heavy personal income tax on high status group and more tax on luxury consumption, so as to improve common residents'well-being; in micro-level, enterprises'managers who operate conspicuous products or services should attach importance to symbolic meanings of their products or brand, because Chinese consumer endorse status and behavior consistency; moreover, they should focus on high-status and high self-esteem group in market segmentation.