HCBE Faculty Articles

Consumer Aspirations and Subjective Well-Being

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Journal of International Consumer Marketing

ISSN

0896-1530

Publication Date

2018

Abstract/Excerpt

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how consumerism aspirations affect consumers' subjective well-being. We used Consumer Aspirations Theory because it focuses on the consequences of divergence between aspired goals or wants concerning outcomes and individual's subjective well-being. We investigated the relationship between consumer hedonism, power values, life and income satisfaction, and consumer subjective well-being of 15,299 respondents in 124 European regions. Our findings indicate that most of the variance in consumer subjective well-being happens at the individual level, with 14.63% of the variance due to regional differences. Even though variables such as national GDP and political freedom has received attention in subjective well-being research, our results did not support any such region level effects. At the individual level, the negative relationship between hedonism, social power values, and consumer well-being supports the assertions of Consumer Aspirations Theory and indicates that high aspirations might lead to unfulfilled ambitions.

DOI

10.1080/08961530.2018.1459219

Volume

30

Issue

5

First Page

304

Last Page

316

Link to Full Text
Peer Reviewed

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