The effect of economic powerlessness on symbolic consumption

Personal economic condition can play a critical role in consumers’ purchasing pattern. Purchasing decision of consumers are limited by their personal economic condition (Tully, Tershfield, and Meyvis 2015). In this situation, consumers feel economic powerlessness which can be defined as a feeling of relative deprivation by one’s personal economic condition. Then, how consumers do differentiated compensation consumption when they feel the economic powerlessness? The purpose of this study is to show how economic powerlessness has different impact on consumers behavior than social powerlessness does. This study also examines how materialism which is closely related to consumer behavior affect consumers’ purchasing decisions under economic powerlessness. In order to achieve the purposes of this study, a series of 3 experiments were conducted, As a result of study 1, different from social powerlessness, economic powerlessness does not lead consumers to do compensation consumption with power-symbolic products. Study 2 reveals that consumers have stronger purchasing intentions for necessary goods when they feel economic powerlessness while consumers have stronger purchasing intentions for power-symbolic products when they feel economic confidence. Study 3 reveals that consumers with high materialism show stronger purchasing intentions for power-symbolic products even when consumers feel economic powerlessness. On the contrary, consumers with low materialism show stronger purchasing intentions for meaning-symbolic products when they feel economic powerlessness. This results demonstrates strong impact of materialism on consumers’ behavior under economic powerlessness. This study has several significant contributions in that it distinguishes economic powerlessness from social powerlessness and examines how economic powerlessness influences consumers’ purchasing behaviors. As economic recession continues, investigating consumer behavior under economic powerless is getting more significant. In this light, this study can play an important role as a basis for future studies in respective research area.