Abstract

This dissertation investigates the influence of subjective socioeconomic status (SSES) on consumers’ decision making in conspicuous, impulsive, and compulsive consumption. It comprises three essays. The first essay examines whether and how SSES impacts conspicuous consumption decisions. Two studies reveal that SSES drives consumers’ conspicuous purchases via a sense of entitlement, and that this effect of SSES is stronger for consumers who are higher in trait achievement vanity. The second and third essays probe the impact of SSES on consumers’ impulsive and compulsive buying decisions. The second essay posits that SSES drives both impulsive and compulsive buying through a sense of entitlement and price sensitivity. Such wellbeing-detrimental effect of SSES is expected to get worse in more materialistic consumers. In contrast, the third essay proposes a consumer wellbeing-beneficial process, that is, SSES buffers both impulsive and compulsive buying through a sense of control. This effect of SSES is predicted to get stronger in consumers who have a greater perceived power. These hypothesized relationships between SSES and impulsive and compulsive buying are tested and supported by results from both one cross-sectional study and one experimental study in each essay. In line with previous literature, this dissertation shows that SSES predicts consumer decisions consistently and independently from objective socioeconomic status (OSES).