Consumer Aspirations and Subjective Well-Being

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how consumerism aspirations affect consumers' subjective well-being. We used Consumer Aspirations Theory because it focuses on the consequences of divergence between aspired goals or wants concerning outcomes and individual's subjective well-being. We investigated the relationship between consumer hedonism, power values, life and income satisfaction, and consumer subjective well-being of 15,299 respondents in 124 European regions. Our findings indicate that most of the variance in consumer subjective well-being happens at the individual level, with 14.63% of the variance due to regional differences. Even though variables such as national GDP and political freedom has received attention in subjective well-being research, our results did not support any such region level effects. At the individual level, the negative relationship between hedonism, social power values, and consumer well-being supports the assertions of Consumer Aspirations Theory and indicates that high aspirations might lead to unfulfilled ambitions.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumer aspirations
• hedonism
• income satisfaction
• life satisfaction
• subjective well-being
• social power

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Petrescu

Dr. Maria Petrescu is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Nova Southeastern University. Her research interests are digital marketing, international marketing, and branding. She participated and published in prestigious conferences and publications, such as the American Marketing Association Summer Educators' Conference, the AMS World Marketing Congress, the Academy of Marketing Science Conference, the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Product and Brand Management and the Journal of Internet Commerce. In 2014, she also published a book on Viral marketing and social networks.

Aycan Kara

Dr. Aycan Kara is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at Indiana University Southeast. Her research interests are international management, within-nation regions, entrepreneurship, and multilevel methods. She has authored articles and chapters for publications such as Journal of International Business Studies, Advances in International Management, and Handbook of Organizational Culture and Climate. She has presented her work at AIB, AoM, SMA, and IACCP.