Signaling ideology through consumption

Florian Schneider

No 367, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Firms often discourage certain categories of individuals from buying their products, seemingly at odds with typical assumptions about profit maximization. This paper provides a potential rationale for such firm behavior: Consumers seek to signal that they have “desirable” ideological values to themselves and others by avoiding products popular among people with “undesirable” values. In laboratory experiments and surveys, I provide causal evidence that consumption can be diagnostic of consumers’ ideologies and that demand for a product is lower if its customer base consists of individuals whose ideological values are widely considered undesirable. These effects occur for both observable and unobservable consumption and for products that do not possess any inherent ideological or undesirable qualities.

Keywords: Ideology; social image; self-image; signaling; consumption; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D12 M3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10, Revised 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta and nep-hpe
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:367

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