The Materialism and Conspicuous Consumption in South Korea

Abstract

Consumption of luxury on a lavish scale in order to increase one's prestige is referred to as conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is the act of buying products or services in order to showcase one's fortune and demonstrate one's social status, especially when products or services are displayed in public and are out of reach for other members of one's class. This study was conducted to examine the effects of Materialism and Conspicuous Consumption between some important antecedent variables and continuous intention. This framework was extended by including Self-Esteem, Public Self-Consciousness, Being Fashionable, and the Need for Uniqueness. The methodologies adopted for this study are conceptually and practically linked with previous studies, to grow on them while minimizing the limitations. The first phase was identifying the research objectives, scope, and research questions, as well as examining the literature, and creating and refining the research model. On the other hand, Materialism and Conspicuous Consumption to continuous intention are the focus of the second phase which was derived from the literature review and was empirically confirmed using data from an online survey. The third phase is analyzing the data and generating results. For this research, 276 samples were collected via an online survey and 270 respondents were found valid. The structural equation modeling technique was used since it allows simultaneous analysis. The model was examined using the data acquired for the research. This study used SmartPLS 3 and IBM SPSS version 20. This work robustly explores Materialism and Conspicuous Consumption. But the primary purpose is to explore the affiliation among antecedents (i.e., Self-Esteem, Public Self-Consciousness, Being Fashionable, Need for Uniqueness, Materialism, Conspicuous Consumption, and Continuous Intention). The results of the analyses show that Self-Esteem, Public Self-Consciousness, Being Fashionable, and the Need for Uniqueness have positive impacts on Conspicuous Consumption. Being Fashionable and the Need for Uniqueness have positive impacts on Materialism. A satisfactory overall model fit index supports most of the proposed hypotheses. The empirical findings of this research work provide a new understanding and explain the fundamental mechanism under users' decision-making process to Continuous intention.