Comparing conspicuous consumption across different experiential products: Culture and leisure

Introduction: three recent trends in consumer behavior

During the past decade, consumer behavior in advanced economies underwent three main developments:

The first trend can be characterized as the emergence of the “experience society” and “experiential purchases” (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Also, experience recommendation theory claims that consumers will be happier if they spend their money on life experiences such as travel and dining rather than on material possessions such as clothes and jewelry (Yang & Mattila, 2017). Van Boven and Gilovich (2003) conclude that consumers tend to prefer experiential consumption to material goods. Kim (2018) adds that “consumers whose interest is ‘keeping ahead of the Joneses’ will value the rarity and scarcity of luxury experiences” (p. 291). Concerning the second trend, young people in particular do not want to exude something by means of their possessions, but rather by means of what they do or experience in relation to their personality. In their study of conspicuous consumption, O’Cass and McEwen (2004) conclude that two factors play a role. Thus, not only the ostentation of status, income, and wealth but also something symbolic related to the consumer’s identity. Woodward (2010) says: “The Facebook generation does not define what they own, but what they know and what they do or experience . . .” (p. 7). The third trend can be seen as a moderator of the previous two trends. It allows people to show previously intangible and fleeting experiences to others in real time. For example, in the past the only way to communicate your vacation experiences to other people was by sending a postcard, and communicating about museum visits took place at birthday parties. Nowadays, this communication can be done easily by means of tweets or Facebook updates with photographs and moving images (Bronner & de Hoog, 2018; Josiassen & Assaf, 2013).

The combination of these three trends did arouse a renewed interest in the concept of conspicuous consumption in the area of experiential purchases (Bronner & de Hoog, 2018; Gallo, Sood, Man, & Gilovich, 2017). The term conspicuous consumption has a long history. Veblen (1899) used this term more than 100 years ago in his book The Theory of the Leisure Class. His idea was that people make choices not only for their enjoyment value or for the satisfaction or usefulness that these choices offer for themselves, but that a consumer also wants to send a signal to others with his or her material choices. In other words: consumer choices are not only about the utility that the product offers you personally, but are also about what you are showing or signaling to your social environment. Although there is agreement in the literature that the importance of experiential products is increasing (trend 1), there is disagreement about the signaling role of these products. The main question addressed in this contribution is whether conspicuous consumption also plays a role in the choosing of and signaling about a broad range of experiential products.

A contribution that reflects this disagreement and discussion is provided by Carter and Gilovich (2012). They conclude that “experiences may . . . be relatively poor choices for those hoping to convey wealth and status” (p. 1314), but this quote does not include the possible role of identity demonstration. Somewhat further on, with regard to this identity signaling, they state that “. . . . there is little reason to believe that participants in the present studies retrieved the examples of possessions that they did because of their identity-signaling value” (p. 1314). However, when concluding, they remark “the present studies replicate previous work demonstrating that experiences tend to be more satisfying than possessions and provide empirical support for one of the proposed mechanisms underlying that result, namely, that experiences are more closely related to the self” (p. 1315). Gilovich, Kumar, and Jampol (2015, p. 159) summarize the results of the research into the difference in satisfaction between material and experiential purchases as follows:

These statements appear to imply that conspicuous consumption will play a minor role for experiential purchases, but the majority of the research line mentioned above is done from a psychological point of view (i.e., what a purchase means for the individual self), but it did not investigate the sociological and socio-psychological dimensions of experiential purchases (self vs others). For example, the third point above mentions “other experiential purchases” and, though it is not specified, this means “other experiential purchases by the same individual.” This research focuses on the effect of a purchase on individual happiness but does not touch upon the question as to why consumers prefer to spend money on experiential purchases. One of the reasons why these purchases make them happier is because it allows them to communicate something about themselves to other people: an extrinsic motivation (signaling to others) instead of an intrinsic one (utility of the purchase for the self). In the culture and arts domain, which is investigated in this contribution, Bernstein (2006) remarks that benefits gained from visiting classical music concerts vary from extrinsic to intrinsic, the former being directed toward a person’s social environment. Bourdieu (1984) too showed sociological interest in the relationship between status and cultural taste (Michael, 2017). Together, this points to the notion that conspicuous consumption can also be a driver of consumption behavior in the cultural and arts domain, as another instance of experiential purchases.

However, the role of conspicuous consumption can only be determined by investigating the question of whether an experiential purchase is driven by or associated with an extrinsic motivation, and not by merely investigating the effect of an experiential purchase on individual happiness or a similar aspect. Kamakura and Du (2012) carried out a study into which products are signaling goods par excellence, and they refer to these as positional goods. For these goods, the role of relevant others is also important in relation to buying behavior, aside from their importance for the self.

In a study into the relationship between an experiential product (holiday choice) and conspicuous consumption (see Bronner & de Hoog, 2018), it was found that displaying status as well as identity by means of your holiday does play a role in choosing a vacation. A large majority of people are convinced that, in general, the choice of a summer holiday says a lot about what kind of person someone is. This identity can be expressed through the choice of a destination, an accommodation, a way of organizing (with or without tour operator), and a means of transport. To summarize, with a holiday you want to personally enjoy yourself (intrinsic motivation) but also to show your social environment who you are (extrinsic motivation).

Bronner and de Hoog (2018) state at the end of their article that a limitation of their study is “that the study is based on data gathered for choosing vacations, which is only a single example of an experiential purchase” (p. 101). A comparison with other intangible products would make it possible “to provide insights if our findings about conspicuous consumption can be generalized across experiential purchases” (p. 101). The study reported about in this contribution enables us to gain this broader insight into the role that conspicuous consumption plays in the changing context of consumer behavior as perceptible in the three trends identified in the beginning of this introduction.

Conspicuous consumption and cultural participation

The need to investigate a broader range of experiential products raises the question of which experiential products are eligible to choose from. As the research will be carried out in the Netherlands, it should be noted that there are three main categories of immaterial purchases in this country: eating out, vacations, and culture. Together, they represent €41 billion of expenditure a year. Eating out comes first considering spending, vacations come second, and culture comes third. This makes it interesting to repeat the vacation study in the culture domain. In the Netherlands, there is a yearly survey concerning the brand strength of cultural brands (Cultural Brand Survey). This research plays a major role in marketing decisions in various cultural sectors. In addition to the standard questions about brand awareness, brand sympathy, and brand image, the 2018 survey focused on specific questions concerning the role conspicuous consumption plays in attending and participating in different types of cultural events. These questions have a twofold purpose:

The holiday survey showed that conspicuous consumption comprises two factors for vacations as instances of experiential purchases (Bronner & de Hoog, 2018, p. 96–97):

The research questions for this follow-up project are derived from those findings:

With regard to the different types of cultural events, six different categories are present in the Cultural Brand Survey: museums, theaters, cultural festivals, cinema/film house, classical music concerts, and pop concerts. Status and Identity demonstration are measured in the same way as in the holiday survey. The holiday choice referred to is the main holiday in the summer. The next section describes the operationalization of the concepts and questions.

Operationalization

Altogether, 11 questions were asked: 2 general introductory questions and 9 questions that are necessary for the construction of the two scales that aim to measure status and identity demonstration. To begin with, see below the formulation of the two introductory questions.

All 9 items are presented to the respondents with a 7-point “applicability” scale. The focus of the research is on the extent to which conspicuous consumption plays a role for the respondent him/herself. To reduce social desirability in the responses, this indirect formulation was chosen. Thus, not by directly asking “do you feel more important by visiting certain . . . (e.g., museums) ?,” but by indirectly asking in a projective style “there are people who will feel more important by visiting certain . . . (e.g., museums). To what extent does that apply to you or not?”

In addition, some socio-demographic data (gender, age, social class, education) and frequency of visits to the types of cultural event that is the subject of the conspicuous consumption measurement are available.

Sample

This project was carried out by Hendrik Beerda Brand Consultancy in collaboration with the research agency No Ties. The questions for the conspicuous consumption measurement are a part of one of the largest Dutch culture studies that are conducted annually on behalf of a large number of institutions/organizations in the cultural sector. The central subject is the measurement of the brand strength of specific cultural brands. The total random sample is n = 2248 (18+ representatives for the Dutch population) and this entire sample has been asked a filter question about specific cultural participation activities. On the basis of the filter question, six subsamples were assembled. For data collection, computer-assisted self-interviewing (CASI) is used. The seven subsamples are:

Those attending/visiting

In the tables, we use a short description of these categories:

For each subsample, the above 11 questions are asked (2 general questions and 9 conspicuous consumption ones) and they refer to the type of cultural participation for which a respondent is selected. For example, the 288 respondents in the museum subsample receive the nine questions referring to visiting museums. The fieldwork was carried out in January 2018.

Because visits to specific cultural events were used as a filter, it is to be expected that there will be differences between the samples and the background data. To check for this, in Table 1 we give the sample distributions by age and social class.

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Table 1.

Six partial samples broken down by age and social class (% vertically).

	Museumsn = 288%	Theatersn = 273%	Festivalsn = 212%	Moviesn=293%	Classicaln=127%	Popn=211%
Age
18–24	7	7	7	8	6	9
25–34	17	19	19	20	17	20
35–44	21	23	24	24	17	26
45–54	19	17	19	20	18	18
55–64	17	17	14	15	17	19
65+	20	18	18	13	24	10
Social class
A	21	22	29	21	28	23
B1	45	41	40	40	46	43
B2	18	18	17	20	18	21
C	15	17	5	17	9	13
D	1	2	1	2	–	–

*

The construct Social Class is based on a combination of education level and profession, which makes it an indicator of income. Category A is the highest social class and D is the lowest.

From Table 1 it becomes clear that, as can be expected, there are differences according to sociodemographic backgrounds. Most striking is that those attending classical music concerts deviate most from those attending other cultural events: they belong to the highest social class and on average they are the oldest. But in general, the differences between the sample distributions are limited. This last conclusion is in line with Scriven, Yabar, Clemente, and Bennett (2015), who conclude that participants in one of the cultural activities such as visiting museums, galleries, and historic places are “more likely than expected to participate in each of the other forms” (p. 289). Also, Peterson (2005) found a group of “omnivores” particularly located in the consumers of culture. And Hand (2011) concludes that “the notion of highbrow and lowbrow arts attracting different audiences is not borne out by the data” (p. 93).

The results will be discussed in the next section.

Results

As explained in the section “Operationalization,” the first question presented to the respondents was a general projective question about what people think that attending cultural events says about people other than themselves in the cultural sector. The question asked was as follows:

Which . . . (e.g. museums) people visit says a lot about what kind of person one is

Answer possibilities on a 7-point scale: fully agree . . . fully disagree.

In Table, 2 we present the results of this question for the six different cultural event samples as well as the scores from the holiday survey. The purpose of Table 2 is to see whether there are differences in the perceived role of conspicuous consumption for different types of experiential purchases. This refers not to the role which conspicuous consumption plays for that person him/herself, but to his or her judgment of whether you can use visiting and attendance behavior regarding cultural events as a personality identifier. If a lot of people agree with the statement, then many people think that conspicuous consumption is relevant in this domain.

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Table 2.

The perceived role of conspicuous consumption in cultural participation compared with holidays (% vertically).

	Museumsn = 288%	Theatersn = 273%	Festi-valsn = 212%	Moviesn = 293%	Classicaln = 127%	Popn = 211%	Holidaysn = 1,390%
Fully agree	3	3	7	1	5	3	4
Agree	18	16	25	13	17	26	25
Agree somewhat	37	32	43	26	26	39	34
Neutral	25	22	14	27	27	17	25
Disagree somewhat	7	10	4	12	9	6	6
Disagree	5	8	6	10	9	5	4
Fully disagree	5	9	2	11	7	5	3
Mean a	4.5	4.2	4.9	3.9	4.3	4.7	4.7
SD	1.4	1.6	1.3	1.6	1.6	1.4	1.3

a

Fully agree = 7, fully disagree = 1.

The first observation that stands out in Table 2 is that considerable differences exist between the six types of cultural events (11 out of 15 t-tested differences between means are significant, see Appendix 1 for details). Festivals, pop, and museums have the highest average scores and, when we add up the three first “agree” percentages, they also have the highest percentage of “agree” answers. Going to movies says the least about what kind of person one is. The two highest scoring cultural events (festivals and pop) score higher than or equal to holidays. To give an idea of how many people think that conspicuous consumption says something about others when it comes to participation in cultural events, we add together the three “agree” categories from Table 2:

Holidays would be in the third place, at 63%, coming in between pop concerts and museums. No less than three-quarters of the festival visitors believe that attending festivals says a lot about what kind of person someone is, and for pop the result is about two-thirds. Overall, many people think that attending or visiting cultural events says something about someone’s personality, which shows that for cultural events, as examples of experiential purchases, conspicuous consumption plays a substantial role.

The second general question presented to the respondent concerns social visibility.

I like to tell my friends and acquaintances to which . . . (e.g. museums) I am going

Answer possibilities on a 7-point scale: fully applicable . . . definitely not applicable.

The aim of Table 3 is to check whether people communicate more or less frequently with others about attending or visiting cultural events and going on a vacation. In contrast to Table 2, this concerns the respondents’ own behavior, which is why the answer categories with “applicable” are used, rather than those with “agree” (see also the need to reduce social desirability in the section “Operationalization”).

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Table 3.

Social visibility of cultural participation compared with holidays (% vertically).

	Museumsn = 288%	Theatersn = 273%	Festi-valsn = 212%	Moviesn = 293%	Classicaln = 127%	Popn = 211%	Holidaysn = 1,390%
Fully applicable	2	2	2	1	2	3	2
Applicable	6	6	9	6	7	16	11
Somewhat applicable	15	11	20	9	13	19	21
Neutral	18	13	21	17	21	15	29
Somewhat inapplicable	13	14	13	13	10	15	13
Not applicable	19	21	14	15	19	12	14
Definitely not applicable	27	32	21	40	28	20	10
Mean a	3.0	2.8	3.4	2.6	3.0	3.6	3.8
SD	1.7	1.7	1.7	1.7	1.8	1.9	1.6

a

Fully applicable = 7, definitely not applicable = 1.

The same three cultural events as in Table 2 also score the highest in response to this question. There is very frequent communication with others about pop concerts. Holidays are in the same range as pop concerts and festivals, but score a higher average in terms of communication. The least communication with the social environment concerns going to movies. In order to obtain an idea regarding how many people are involved in communicating about cultural events, we add up the percentages for “applicable” from Table 3:

Holidays come second at 34%, after pop. Generalizing about the different forms of experiential purchases, there is more communication about holidays than about attending cultural events in general.

The next step in the analysis is investigating RQ1 (To what extent do Status demonstration and Identity demonstration [together forming conspicuous consumption] play a role in participating in different types of cultural event) and RQ2 (Is the role played by Status demonstration and Identity demonstration in cultural participation larger or smaller than in holiday choice?)

In the holiday study, two scales were found representing different aspects of conspicuous consumption and these were reused in this study: Status demonstration consisting of six items and Identity demonstration consisting of three items.

The six items that used to measure Status demonstration are:

Attending or visiting certain . . . (e.g. museums)

The following three items were used to measure Identity demonstration:

Attending or visiting certain . . . (e.g. museums)

The first step in the analysis is to check whether these items also form two separate scales in this study. As Table 4 shows, the Cronbach’s alphas of both scales in all subsamples are well above the limit of .70. This means that they can be used in the subsequent analyses.

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Table 4.

Cronbach’s alphas of the two conspicuous consumption scales.

Cronbach’s alpha	Museumsn = 288	Theatersn = 273	Festi-valsn = 212	Moviesn = 293	ClassicalN = 127	Popn = 211	Holidaysn = 1,390
Status	.96	.95	.95	.96	.97	.95	.96
Identity	.80	.87	.81	.84	.86	.77	.80

Based on Cronbach’s alpha scores as shown in Table 4, it is permissible to calculate the average scores on the two conspicuous consumption scales (Status and Identity) for the six subsamples and to compare them with the holiday survey (see Table 5).

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Table 5.

Average scores on the two conspicuous consumption scales.

Scale scores a	Museumsn = 288	Theatersn = 273	Festivalsn = 212	Moviesn = 293	Classicaln = 127	Popn = 211	Holidaysn = 1,390
Status Mean	11.7	12.3	12.5	11.3	14.0	10.8	21.5
SD	7.5	7.7	8.0	7.3	9.2	7.1	9.6
Identity Mean	7.4	7.2	7.7	6.7	7.9	7.5	7.7
SD	4.0	4.2	4.3	4.0	4.6	4.2	3.8

a

Status scale: minimal score 6, maximal score 42; Identity scale: minimal score 3, maximal score 21.

From Table 5 we can conclude that as regards Status, the highest scores can be found for classical music, festivals, and theaters. From the six significant relations (t-tested means), four times classical music is involved and three times pop (see Appendix 1 for the details). For Identity, the same conclusion holds true in part: pop concerts take the third place here, at the expense of theaters. Out of the five significant relations (t-tested means) movies are involved four times (see Appendix 1 for the details). The Identity score for holidays is in line with the Identity scores for most of the cultural events. The Status score for holidays exceeds that of all the cultural events. Apparently, individuals use a holiday as a way of signaling their status more than they use attending cultural events for that purpose.

Table 5 shows the scale scores for the totality of the subsamples. The question arises as to whether these scores differ for sociodemographic background characteristics. We calculated a series of product moment correlations between the scale scores on Status and Identity and the background data: social class, age, gender, and education in each of the six subsamples (see Table 6). Most notable are the significant correlations between education and the two conspicuous consumption scales. Less well-educated people especially signal status by attending a cultural event more than better-educated people do.

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Table 6.

Product moment correlations between the educational level of those attending cultural events and the two conspicuous consumption scales.

Correlation and significance	Museumsn = 288	Theatersn = 273	Festi-valsn = 212	Moviesn = 293	Classicaln = 127	Popn = 211
Correlation Status with education significance	−.15 .009	−.17 .005	−.23 .001	−.12 .04	−.22 .015	−.15 .028
Correlation Identity with education significance	ns	Ns	−.15 .029	ns	−.21 .016	ns

It is also interesting to see whether there is a relationship between conspicuous consumption scores and frequency of participation in different types of cultural events. Do high-frequency attendees want to signal more their Status and Identity to others by means of their attendance, or is it low-frequency attendees who want to signal more by means of participation in cultural events or does it make no difference? Significant positive correlations between the extent to which Identity is considered to be important and frequency of attendance were found for attending festivals, going to movies, attending pop concerts, and attending classical music concerts. Concerning Status, significant positive correlations were found for attending festivals and movies. So with regard to attendance frequency, it can be concluded that Identity plays a greater role than Status. It is striking that no relationship was found for frequency of visits to museums.

Conclusions

Two research questions were formulated earlier in this contribution. This section presents the answers as regards those questions.

The answer as regards this RQ is:

The answer as regards this RQ is:

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Table 7.

Rank order and mean of type of cultural event as regards three conspicuous consumption aspects.

	Rank order, projection to Others	Rank order,Own status	Rank order,Own identity
Museums a	3 (4.5)	4 (7.5)	4 (7.4)
Theaters	5 (4.2)	3 (7.7)	5 (7.2)
Festivals	1 (4.9)	2 (8.0)	2 (7.7)
Movies	6 (3.9)	5 (7.3)	6 (6.7)
Classical music	4 (4.3)	1 (9.2)	1 (7.9)
Pop	2 (4.7)	6 (7.1)	3 (7.5)

a

Rank orders 1,2 and 3 are shown bold faced.

To summarize: conspicuous consumption plays a role in a range of experiential purchases, but there are considerable differences between them in terms of presence, type, and behavioral consequences.

These conclusions have implications for at least two stakeholders: researchers (theory) and disseminators of the marketing message (practice).

Implications

Theory

Based on the results presented above, a tentative theory can be proposed regarding the relationship between conspicuous consumption and the properties of experiential products. This theory is based on four basic characteristics which set experiential products apart from other products:

Configurability: the degree to which the individual participant can shape the experience. This is rather low for movies but high for vacations. After choosing a movie, the spectator cannot change anything when watching the movie, it just unfolds. Festivals and pop concerts offer more opportunities for adjusting your experience when participating: one can skip performances of musicians one is not interested in. Vacations are highly configurable: you can almost entirely configure your own holiday, in advance as well as while enjoying it.

Physical involvement: the degree to which one becomes physically involved in the experience. This is high for vacations, because you experience them by being the main participating actor. Movies do not allow you to be physically involved as you are not an actor playing a role, but emotional involvement can be substantial. Festivals and pop concerts encourage actual participation by attendees, with performers inviting them to dance, clap their hands, and sing along.

Frequency of choosing a product: vacations are taken only a few times a year and festivals and pop concerts too are not available on a daily or weekly basis. You can go to see a movie everyday if you want to, and quite often classical music concerts are widely available.

Intersection of groups involved: in conspicuous consumption, two groups are relevant: the consumer group to which one belongs (the consumption group) and the group to which the behavior is signaled (the signal group). If the consumption group and the signal group have a large overlap, then conspicuous consumption will not play an important role because it is almost impossible to signal something special about your personality, as almost all people in the signal group have the same experiences. When the overlap is small or non-existent, the opposite will hold true, as probably nobody shares your experience, which will make this experience more unique.

Based on these four basic characteristics and the results from the research, we propose a tentative theory about the role conspicuous consumption can play for experiential products. A highly conspicuous consumption product is bought infrequently (if you can buy it every day, it will not attract attention), has a high level of physical involvement, should be highly configurable to allow you to express something of your personality, and it allows you to set yourself apart from the signal group. A consumption product with low conspicuousness has a low configurability (you cannot adjust it while experiencing it), low physical involvement (you are not directly physically participating in it), a high frequency of purchase (it does not attract attention if you buy it every day), and it will not set you apart from the signal group, as everyone had probably the same or a comparable experience.

When we locate the experiential products included in the research within this classificatory framework, this results in Table 8.

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Table 8.

Theoretical framework for classifying experiential products.

	Configurability	Involvement	Frequency	Group intersection
Vacations	High	High	Low	Average
Festivals	Average	High	Low	Small
Pop	Average	High	Average	Small
Classical music	Low	Low	High	Small
Theater	Low	Average	High	Large
Museums	Average	Low	High	Average
Movies	Low	Low	High	Large

This theory offers a challenge: the expansion of conspicuous consumption research into other domains, and it provides a starting point for formulating expectations and hypotheses.

Further research

As we wrote earlier in this contribution, there are three main categories of experiential purchases: eating out, vacations, and culture. The latter two were investigated by us. The first is an important Other candidate for investigation because expenditure on it exceeds the other two categories combined. However, investigating it is somewhat more complicated because it covers a wide range of activities: from drinking a single beer in a pub to having a dinner in a three-star restaurant. One option is to categorize eating out in accordance with expenditure on a meal and the origin of the cuisine (French, Asiatic, Italian, etc.). Furthermore, the findings from this contribution and the proposed theory will allow the specification of testable hypotheses about the role of conspicuous consumption and, if present, the difference between Status and Identity considerations.