Materialism

Title:

Materialism: Trait Aspects of Living in the Material World

Author:

Russell W. Belk

Reference:

Belk, W.Russell(1985), "Materialism: Trait Aspects of Living in the Material World", The Journal of Consumer Research, 3(12):265-280.

Abstract:

The relevance of materialism to consumer behavior is discussed. Materialism is advanced as a critical but neglected macro consumer-behavior issue. Measures for materialism and three subtraits-envy, nongenerosity, and possessiveness-are presented and tested. The subtraits are compared over three generations of con-sumers from the same families, and measure validity is further explored via responses to a sentence completion task. Based on these results, a call is made for research into related macro consumer-behavior issues.