News
Marketing professors’ research on Chinese consumerism honored
June 09, 2011
Srinivas Durvasula and Steven Lysonski, professors of marketing, have been honored with the 2011 Best Paper Award by the Journal of Consumer Marketing for their study titled, “Money, money, money – How do attitudes toward money impact vanity and materialism? – The case of young Chinese consumers.”
This is the third such award by academic researchers in the college for the 2010-11 academic year. Associate Professor of Finance Anthony Pennington-Cross’ study on subprime mortgages received the 2010 Edwin S. Mills Best Paper in Real Estate Economics, and Assistant Professor of Finance Marcus Braga-Alves’ research on dividend policies in Brazil was honored by the Journal of Corporate Finance.
Durvasula and Lysonski have been research collaborators for two decades, studying consumer behavior in countries across the globe. In this recent award-winning and first-of-its kind study, the professors sought to understand attitudes towards money in China and how these attitudes affect elements of consumer behavior such as materialism and vanity, particularly among young Chinese.
Their findings suggest that young Chinese believe that money permits one to attain not only status and possessions, but also power and control over others, thus contributing to increased materialism and expressions of vanity among young Chinese.
“For marketers, the results imply that positioning products based on the possession of money and the use of this money to indulge hedonism may resonate well with young Chinese consumers,” Durvasula said.
Lysonski added: “Some of the relationships we found may cause concern to ethicists and consumer watchdogs because of the associated problems of compulsive buying and other problems which are prevalent in consumer societies.”
A copy of “Money, money, money – How do attitudes toward money impact vanity and materialism? – The case of young Chinese consumers” is available online.
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