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Appearance vanity or achievement vanity: which better predicts young consumers’ decision-making orientations?

Hakan Cengiz (Department of Marketing, Faculty of Business, Karabuk University, Karabuk, Turkey)
Rabiya Gokce Arpa (Department of Business Administration, Karabuk Universitesi, Karabuk, Turkey)
Kubra Nur Sezgin (Karabuk Universitesi, Karabuk, Turkey)

Young Consumers

ISSN: 1747-3616

Article publication date: 25 June 2024

Issue publication date: 20 November 2024

101

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to operationalize consumer decision-making styles as higher-order constructs and investigates the influence of two distinct subdimensions of consumer vanity – namely, appearance vanity and achievement vanity – on consumer decision-making orientations (CDMO).

Design/methodology/approach

Using data from an online survey of 319 young adults, the authors construct a higher-order structural model capturing the following three orientations: social/conspicuous, utilitarian and undesirable. The partial least squares structural equation modeling approach was used to test the validity of the higher-order structural model and the hypothesized relationships.

Findings

Results, confirming the higher-order structure of consumer decision-making styles, highlight the distinctive impacts of the vanity dimensions on different CDMOs. Specifically, appearance vanity predominantly affects social and undesirable orientations, and achievement vanity influences utilitarian orientation.

Originality/value

While several theoretical classifications of consumer decision-making styles have been proposed in the past, none of the earlier studies leveraged those classifications as higher-order models. Addressing this literature gap, this study provides empirical evidence associating CDMOs with a specific consumer trait – vanity – thereby validating the higher-order nature of consumer decision-making styles.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contribution: H.C.: conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, writing – original draft; writing – review and editing. K.N.S.: investigation, resources, writing – original draft. R.G.A.: writing – review and editing.

Citation

Cengiz, H., Gokce Arpa, R. and Sezgin, K.N. (2024), "Appearance vanity or achievement vanity: which better predicts young consumers’ decision-making orientations?", Young Consumers, Vol. 25 No. 6, pp. 869-887. https://doi.org/10.1108/YC-12-2023-1919

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

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