| Abstract [eng] |
Excessive and irresponsible consumer behavior has attracted the attention of researchers from various fields. Moreover excessive consumption contradicts to the principles of sustainable consumption, and it is harmful to the environment (Belk, 1985), also it causes negative psychological consequences for consumers (Burroughs and Rindfleisch, 2002). Sneath et al. al. (2009) found that compulsive and impulsive buying is associated with a tendency to depression, stress, lower subjective well-being (Kalla and Arora, 2011) and lower life satisfaction (Lins, 2012). The negative consequences for the personal well-being of consumers have led researchers to pay attention to the causes of this phenomena. Many researchers (Podoshen and Andrzejewski, 2012; Santini's et al., 2019; Li, 2019; Park et al., 2006; Mathur, 2019; Badgaiyan and Verma, 2014) focus at the phenomenon of materialism as one of the antecedents of impulsive buying. Dittmar et. al. (1995) and Iram and Chacharkar (2017) found that there is a positive relationship between consumers self-discrepancy and impulsive buying. Compensatory theory of consumer behavior postulates that consumption is the result of self-discrepancy (Mandel et al., 2017). Self-discrepancy has been analyzed in the contexts of online shopping (Li, 2019) and the purchase of luxury goods, where shopping becomes a compensatory tool to meet intangible needs (Friese, 2001) or motivation to approach the “ideal self” through material goods (Dittmar et al., 2005 ). Although self-discrepancy can be seen as a motive for both increased and decreased consumption, however research data that analyzes the relationship between self-discrepancy and the propensity for impulsive buying and materialism is lacking. Dittmar et al. al. (1996) found that self-discrepancy has a positive effect on materialism, which subsequently has a positive effect on impulsive buying. However, the study of the above-mentioned author was limited to only one aspect of behavior - compulsive buying, which was considered to be equal to impulsive buying. An empirical study revealed that self-discrepancy has a statistically significant positive effect on impulsive buying and materialism, e. g. the greater self-discrepancy results to the greater propensity for impulsive buying and for materialism. Also research revealed, consumers were found to be more materialistic, demonstrated a greater propensity for impulsive buying. It has also been found that self-discrepancy has a statistically significant indirect positive effect on impulsive buying mediated by materialism, e. g. the rise of self-discrepancy increases the propensity for materialism, which subsequently has a positive effect on impulsive buying. The results of the empirical study revealed that elements of subjective well-being, such as the frequency of positive affects, the frequency of negative affects, life satisfaction and psychological well-being, have no statistically significant effect on the relationship between self-discrepancy and materialism and between materialism and impulsive buying. |
