 Money or love? The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer life goals and subjective well-beingXiaoying Zheng, Chenhan Ruan and Lei Zheng Journal of Business Research, 2021, vol. 137, issue C, 626-633 Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly changed how consumers live. This research investigated the impact of the pandemic on two important life goals—material versus relational goals—as well as their subsequent consequences on consumer subjective well-being (SWB). We conducted a three-wave longitudinal study and recruited 1567 participants from mainland China during the pandemic. Cross-lagged model results showed that consumers’ perceived threat of the pandemic was positively related to the importance placed on material and relational goals, which conduced to divergent effects on consumer SWB. Specifically, the greater the threat consumers perceived in the pandemic, the more emphasis they placed on material success and social relationships. However, pursuing material goals had a negative impact on SWB, but relational goals had a favorable influence on SWB. Our findings enhance understanding of how consumers’ life goals changed during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer insights for marketing in the current and future pandemics. Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Perceived threat; Material goal; Relational goal; Subjective well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:137:y:2021:i:c:p:626-633 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2021.08.044 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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