Exploring the Relationships Among Personal Values, Self-Concept´s Affective Security Dimension and Female Consumption Behavior: Perspectives from the Brazilian Retail Experience

Abstract

Despite the importance of personal values and self-concept to understand consumers’ motivation and its influence over an individual’s action system, few studies have analyzed their relationship with consumer behavior in emerging countries. As a means of expression, consumers use brands and products in order to communicate their self-concept and personal values to their reference group. This study seeks to shed light on the causality relationship among personal values, self-concept´s affective security dimension and female consumer behavior in retail environments in an emerging country, namely Brazil. To test the study’s hypotheses, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were employed. The research sample consisted of 204 women who live in Brazil. The results reveal a significant relationship between personal values and women’s self-concept, especially on its affective security dimension. Self-concept also had significant influence on female consumers’ behavior. Seven of the eight hypotheses tested found support. Managerial implications of the findings are also discussed.