Institutional Foundation Of Materialism In China

The passion for materialism is kindled over the world in recent years. China, as one of several countries keeping the rapid development, the aspiration for materialistic life maintaining in the underline society is growing in intensity. The change leading to the great changes in consumer behavior, consumer well-being, consumer satisfaction attracts the attention of the academia. Many scholars are concerned about the issues like’What is materialism’,’Impacts of materialism’,’the antecedents of materialism’. According to extant studies, materialism is often associated with wealth, which is positive while its negative influences also catch our attention. From the perspective of Macro-Marketing, materialism may enhance conspicuous consumption and contribute to lower life satisfaction, consumer well-being, thereby decreasing social welfare. It is urgent to find out the antecedents of materialism which may do us a favor to alleviate negative effects told above. At present, studies related to materialism mainly focus on the influence of materialism and the antecedents in individual level. Researches regarding the macro-antecedents of materialism are still deficient which makes the manipulation of materialism more difficult to scholars. Based on great amount of literature review, the paper will categorize the different opinions of the scholars by definition, antecedents and impacts of materialism, describing its influence on consumer satisfaction, consumer well-being. Grounded on the foregoing analysis, the author proposes that it is feasible and essential to study on the institutional factors that maybe devote to the materialism. Then the research constructs theoretical model of the assumption between institutional factors and materialism. By empirical analysis, the study will firstly measure the applicability of applied materialism and dominant social paradigm (DSP) scales which is used to measure institution patterns in Chinese environment and then test the relationship between two core constructs. Based on the results, this study will explain the guiding significance of institution, its indirect impact on hot issues in Macro-Marketing like life satisfaction and so on. The author hopes the research will provide some suggestion to the future researches in relation to materialism, conspicuous consumption, life satisfaction, and consumer well-being, making practical pointed recommendations on guiding the social materialistic value as well as promoting the social welfare.