What makes materialistic consumers more ethical? Self-benefit vs. other-benefit appeals

Yuhosua Ryoo, Yongjun Sung, Inna Chechelnytska

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    72 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Materialism is known to be negatively related to consumers’ ethical behaviors, and prior research has often assumed that highly materialistic consumers do not behave ethically. This study challenges such conventional wisdom and investigated ways to motivate highly materialistic consumers to engage in ethical consumption behaviors by examining the moderating role of the appeal type across two studies. The results indicated that highly materialistic consumers showed more positive attitudinal and behavioral responses to ethical products and campaigns when self-benefit (vs. other-benefit) appeals are implemented; however, less materialistic consumers’ responses did not depend on the appeal type. The two egoistic motivations, protective and enhancement motivations, were found to mediate the positive effect of self-benefit appeals among highly materialistic consumers. These findings suggest that materialistic and ethical values do not represent opposite ends of a single dimension, but rather indicate two independent dimensions in the same individual. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)173-183
    Number of pages11
    JournalJournal of Business Research
    Volume110
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2020 Mar

    Bibliographical note

    Funding Information:
    This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea ( NRF-2019S1A3A2099973 ).

    Publisher Copyright:
    © 2020 Elsevier Inc.

    Keywords

    • Enhancement motivation
    • Ethical consumption
    • Materialism
    • Other-benefit appeals
    • Protective motivation
    • Self-benefit appeals

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Marketing

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