What Do We Really Need? Goals and Values, Security, and the Perception of Consumer Necessity

Abstract

There is a general trend for consumer goods considered luxuries to become thought of as necessities. Although the luxury/necessity distinction is central to the fields of marketing and economics, little research has examined the perception of necessity as a psychological phenomenon. Three studies examined the relationship of the perceived necessity of a variety of consumer goods to goals, values, and insecurity. In Study 1, the number of goods considered necessities as opposed to luxuries correlated negatively with intrinsic and positively with extrinsic goal pursuit. In Study 2, this pattern generalized to the distinction between needs and wants, the extent to which participants reported needing their possessions, and to materialistic values. In Study 3, the perception of necessity mediated the relationship between anxious attachment and materialism, suggesting that needing consumer products has in part a basis in interpersonal insecurity. In turn, it may facilitate materialistic consumption.

An assessment of attachment style measures in marketing

“…Materialism was measured with the 9-item Material Values scale (a = 0.88) (Richins, 2004), and self-esteem was captured by the 10-item (a = 0.88) Rosenberg (1965) scale. In line with previous research, general attachment anxiety was expected to be positively associated with social media addiction (Blackwell et al, 2017;Schimmenti et al, 2014) and materialism (Norris et al, 2012;Norris and Williams, 2016) and negatively associated with self-esteem (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991;Collins and Read, 1990).…”

Impact ofCOVID‐19 pandemic on household financial decisions: A consumer vulnerability perspective

“…This finding is especially noteworthy as it indicates that the restrictions, fears, and vulnerabilities experienced during the pandemic have encouraged consumers to focus on product/services/experiences that give them a sense of freedom, joy, and extravagance to compensate for the lost opportunities during the pandemic. This is line with Norris and Williams ( 2016 ) who refer to consumers' perception of necessity as a psychological phenomenon associated with insecurities. Moreover, the findings contribute to psychological reactance theory (Rosenberg & Siegel, 2018 ), revealing that changes in behavior in response to threats could extend to redefining necessities.…”

A review of value drivers in service settings

“…The next work retained which supplements PERVAL is the experiential value scale in the work by Mathwick et al (2001) with values like efficiency (two items on ease of shopping and optimum time management), store aesthetics (two items) and escapism in shopping (two items). Finally, to these seven values we add, due to the idiosyncrasy of the chosen sectors (food and furniture), the duplication of excellence into product quality (already mentioned) and service quality , the latter representing interaction with contact staff (three items from Sweeney et al (1999) which seek to depict consumer understanding of the above-mentioned hybrid nature of the product/service) and ethics (two ad-hoc items) which reflect perceptions of fair prices and of environmentally friendly actions, both relevant for Spanish shoppers (Calvo-Porral et al , 2016) but corresponding also to a reflection of changes in consumers’ priorities in their valuation of Corporate Social Responsibility (Norris and Williams, 2016; Willems et al , 2016).…”