Materialism and purchase-evoked happiness: A moderated mediation model of purchase type and purchase’s impact on self

Jingyi Duan

Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science, 2020, vol. 30, issue 2, 170-187

Abstract: Although it is suggested that materialism value leads to more purchase-evoked happiness, limited research has investigated the underlying mechanism of the relationship. The purpose of the paper is to fill the research gap, demonstrating how materialism increases purchase-evoked happiness. Two surveys with a student sample (n = 112) and an Amazon Mechanical Turk sample (n = 207) were conducted. Bootstrapping analysis was used to examine the data. The findings identify the mediating role of purchase’s impact on self plays between materialism and purchase-evoked happiness, and reveal that purchase type (material vs. experiential purchase) moderates the mediation. For material purchases, higher-materialism value leads to more perceived impact of the purchases on self, which in turn, results in more purchase-evoked happiness. For experiential purchases, there is no such mediation effect of the purchases’ impact on self between materialism and purchase-evoked happiness. This paper is the first research providing empirical support for materialists’ belief that material possessions influence them personally and identifying the mechanism under which materialism increases purchase-evoked happiness. It expands the research on materialism and purchase type by showing that materialism as a personal value interplays with purchase type in influencing how happiness is obtained from purchases.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21639159.2019.1700150 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jgsmks:v:30:y:2020:i:2:p:170-187

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RGAM20

DOI: 10.1080/21639159.2019.1700150

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science is currently edited by Seong-Yeon Park

More articles in Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().