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Materialism — Social Motivations for Consumption

MMAMaterialism operationalised as social motivations for consumption — the tendency to assign status and social meanings to consumer goods and to use material possessions as a means of social acceptance, peer impression management, and identity signalling in relation to others. Distinct from economic/functional motivations (quality-seeking, value-consciousness), social motivations for consumption reflect a materialistically-oriented consumer disposition in which products function primarily as social symbols rather than functional tools. Developed within the consumer socialisation framework as an outcome variable measuring the degree to which an individual has been socialised to value possessions for their social and status significance.

6 items 1978 α 0.65–0.75 Free Moschis, G.P. & Churchill, G.A., Jr.

What it measures

Part of Moschis and Churchill's landmark consumer socialization framework, the Social Motivations for Consumption subscale operationalises materialism as an outcome of adolescent consumer socialization. Validated in adolescent samples (grades 6–12, n=806) alongside economic motivations, brand attitudes, consumer knowledge, and consumer role perceptions. Social motivations correlate positively with peer communication about consumption, advertising exposure, and television viewing frequency. Economic motivations correlate positively with parental communication and are orthogonal to social motivations — the two dimensions should be scored and analysed separately. One of the earliest empirical operationalisations of consumer materialism, predating both the MVS (Richins & Dawson 1992, id:487) and Belk (1985, id:489) scales by several years. Widely cited in consumer socialisation, adolescent marketing, and intergenerational transmission of materialism research. Social motivations scores predict brand-name consciousness, susceptibility to advertising, and preference for status-signalling products.

Representative items

I want to have a lot of money so that I can buy more things for myself.
Owning nice things makes you important to other people.
It is really important to me to have really nice things.
I would like to have things that impress my friends.
People are judged a lot by the products and brands they buy.

Citation

Moschis, G.P., & Churchill, G.A., Jr. (1978). Consumer socialization: A theoretical and empirical analysis. Journal of Marketing Research, 15(4), 599–609.

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