Acquisition-Based Self-Transformation Expectations Scale

What it measures

Five items measure a consumer's anticipation that owning a particular product would produce meaningful personal gains -- greater respect from others, an enhanced sense of personal importance, increased self-confidence, improved attractiveness to others, and an improved appearance. The items reflect the belief that objects can function as vehicles for self-enhancement and status signalling. The scale is grounded in the concept of transformation expectations: the anticipation that a purchase will change the buyer's life in some personally significant way.

Representative items

• 325 Amazon Mechanical Turk members, North American sample (Study 3)

Citation

Richins, M. L., & Chaplin, L. N. (2015). Material parenting: How the use of goods in parenting fosters materialism in the next generation. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(6), 1333-1357.