Summary: Listen to this post as a PODCASThttp://www.pauravshukla.com/podcast/status1.mp3 Recently one of my research papers got published in the ‘International Marketing Review’. It focused on comparing the status consumption tendencies of British and Indian consumers. In this post, I shall focus on the findings of this study. Firstly, let me define what status consumption is and how it affects our behaviour? Researchers define status consumption as the consumers’ behaviour of seeking to purchase goods and services for the status they confer, regardless of consumer’s objective income or social class. Status consumption generally involved high-end expensive luxury products. They are not consumed by most people regularly but only at the social events of importance. Many consumers use such products to satisfy material needs but also the social needs. In simple words, using status consumption many consumers try to impress the significant others who may include their superiors, social connections, or possibly a future spouse. Status consumption is suggested to be increasing the brand value of the consumer too. While the importance of status consumption is known historically world-over, earlier studies in the domain of status consumption have looked at a single nation and industry context with regard to status consumption. For example, earlier studies have looked at status consumption from the context of clothing in Australia, woman’s cosmetics in the US, automobiles in the US and the UK. However, status consumption does not have such national boundaries and is found to be prevalent across the globe. Therefore, to observe the similarities and differences relating to status consumption, I conducted a study focusing on the status consumption practices among the British and Indian consumers. The countries were chosen for their historic association, product category association with status consumption and commonalities of brands available. For example, India was a British colony for a long time (more than 3 centuries) and Indians are one the largest ethnic minorities in the present day Britain. Similarly, India happens to have the second largest English speaking population across the world. While both countries share great economic and cultural ties, they are significantly different from each other on many macro and micro parameters. The study focused on three important antecedents of status consumption: (a) socio-psychological antecedents; (b) brand antecedents and (c) situational antecedents. The socio-psychological antecedents were further broken into three different categories namely: (a1) social gains; (a2) esteem indication and (a3) ostentation. The brand antecedents were also broken into two categories namely: (b1) management controlled brand features and (b2) market controlled brand features. The figure below represents the model. Status consumption model Instead of discussing the methodology and scale equivalence and such other statistical issues, I will now focus on the status consumption tendencies among the British and Indian consumers. If you wish to read more about it, you can surely visit the source provided below or get in touch with me for further details. It was observed that British consumers utilized status consumption to achieve social gains, indicate esteem and ostentation behaviour. However, in the Indian context consumers engaged in status consumption with mostly ostentation in mind. This demonstrates the differences between Western and Eastern consumers and the impact of culture and markets in their consumption practices. The British consumers, who belong to individualistic culture, focus on their actual self-concept (how the consumer views him/herself). However, in comparison with the Indian consumers, from a collectivist culture, focus on others self-concept (how a consumer thinks others see him/her) as they wish to signal ostentatious behaviour via [...]
