Lead us into temptation: A survey of college students' media use, materialism, beliefs, and attitudes toward advertising, status consumption tendencies, compulsive buying tendencies, brand recall, and purchase intent of luxury products

Few studies have been conducted to examine the complicated relationships between media use, materialism, advertising beliefs, status consumption, compulsive buying, brand recall, and purchase intent of luxury products. So, a mail survey of 501 randomly selected college students was conducted at Southern Illinois University Carbondale in 2005.; The results indicated that television viewing contributed to the formation of respondents' materialistic values (daily television viewing: (beta = 0.15, t = 2.86, p < 0.01). It is probably the first time that a positive association has been identified between the consumption of motion pictures and materialism (r = 0.34, p < 0.01). Results show that television viewing was not only significantly related to respondents' status consumption tendencies (weekend television viewing, r = 0.23, p < 0.05), but also significantly related to their compulsive buying tendencies (daily television viewing: r = 0.12, p < 0.05). Similarly, seeing films was positively correlated to respondents' status consumption (r = 0.23, p < 0.01) and compulsive buying tendencies (r = 0.27, p < 0.01). Magazine reading was also found positively related to respondents' status consumption (r = 0.19, p < 0.01) and compulsive buying tendencies (r = 0.14, p < 0.05).; The study also shows that the more materialistic that respondents are, the more positive their beliefs about advertising will be (r = 0.41, p < 0.01). If they believe that advertising has positive social and economic effects, their attitudes toward advertising will be more favorable (r = 0.32, p < 0.01).; Materialistic respondents are more likely to become status consumers and compulsive spenders as materialism is positively related to status consumption (r = 0.65, p < 0.01) and compulsive buying tendencies (r = 0.46, p < 0.01).; Materialistic respondents are more likely to recall the brands of luxury cars, designer clothes, and jewelry while materialistic respondents are also more likely to express their intent to purchase luxury cars, designer clothes, jewelry, and perfume.