The effect of religiosity on luxury goods: The case of Chilean youths

Abstract

Religion has always rejected the concept of materialism and urged people to live in simplicity and moderation. Nonetheless, reality reveals a different phenomenon. Studies on religion and materialism have found inconsistent results. We examine the effect of religion on materialism and affective attitudes towards luxury goods and the mediating effect of materialism on affective attitude towards luxury goods. We propose the idea that many religious people reject the concept of materialism, but they consider luxury goods consumption compatible with their religious beliefs. 355 university students show that youth consumers with high intrinsic religiosity possess an affective attitude towards luxury goods. The results show that consumers perceived materialism and luxury goods as two separate constructs. Religious consumers reject the concept of materialism as an attachment to worldly possessions, but they maintain their emotional affection towards luxury goods. The results have several implications for both business and religious leaders. First, from a business perspective, there are no significant differences between religious and nonreligious youth consumers, especially in their acceptance of luxury goods. Simply put, religious youth consumers love God, but they also love Gucci (i.e., luxury goods). On the other hand, if religious leaders are teaching their congregations to reject materialism, they may need to shift the focus of their teaching from materialism to the role of luxury goods in their lives and how the purchase and ownership of luxury items may not reflect the true values of their beliefs.

Materialism and life satisfaction: The moderating roles of alexithymia and product retention tendency

“…Previous work has found that materialism is negatively related to age (Belk, 1985; Richins & Dawson, 1992) and research on materialism in children and adolescence suggests that materialism increase in early adolescence (i.e., 12–13 years old) and decrease in late adolescence (i.e., 16–18 years old) and that this effect is mediated by increasing self‐esteem (Chaplin & John, 2007). Research has also found that materialism is related to religiosity (Arli, Gil, & van Esch, 2020) and that, within a culture, materialistic values may differ across generations (Yang & Stening, 2016) and vary with socio‐economic status (Ozgen & Esiyok, 2020). Although antecedents and outcomes of materialism vary across cultures (Schaefer, Hermans, & Parker, 2004; Sidhu & Foo, 2015; Xiao & Tessema, 2019), materialism is prevalent in both Western and Eastern cultures and the degree of materialism does not appear to be directly related to general affluence or degree of development within a culture (Cleveland, Laroche, & Papadopoulos, 2009.…”

Evolution of luxury marketing landscape: a bibliometric analysis and future directions

“…We thereby present a separate content analysis of 195 articles from 2020, extraction of which followed similar methods as the bibliometric analysis. While the overarching themes remain similar, many new sub-themes emerged: Aside from various aspects in consumption behavior like the impact of logos on consumers (Peng et al, 2020 ), bandwagon effect (Mainolfi 2020 ), religiosity (Arli et al 2020 ), prominent research on luxury advertising, and communication (Kim et al 2020 ) emerged. Unlike previous years, 2020 witnessed a surge in luxury services research across industries–tourism (Correia et al 2020 ), service experience at restaurants (Peng, 2020 ), online purchase behavior for hotels (Banerjee and Pal 2020 ) being at the forefront.…”

Holiday advertising versus gift cards: Influence of religiosity on retailer evaluations

“…Marketing scholars have established the importance of religion in understanding consumer behaviour relative to branding, culture and media (Arli et al, 2018(Arli et al, , 2019(Arli et al, , 2020Dávila et al, 2018;Hwang, 2018;Kalliny et al, 2018;Mathras et al, 2016;Minton, Jeffrey Xie, et al, 2018;Montoro-Pons & Cuadrado-García, 2018;Sardana et al, 2018;Souiden et al, 2018). Research indicates that a consumer's religiosity level influences decision making and consumption behaviour and may even be considered as a viable basis for market segmentation (Liu & Minton, 2018;Muralidharan & La Ferle, 2018;Taylor et al, 2010).…”