Materialism, life satisfaction and Compulsive Buying Behavior: An empirical investigation on Egyptian consumers amid Covid‑19 pandemic

Abstract

As part of transformative consumer research, which attempts to achieve effective ways to improve people lives, this research focuses are on comprehending the issue of materialism, especially during the Covid-19 crisis. Few studies deal with materialism within the setting of developing nations, especially in a large populated consumer society like Egypt in the Arab region. For this purpose, this research adds to the prevailing literature on materialism through proposing and testing this research’s conceptual model to investigate whether or not compulsive buying behavior (CBB) has a mediating impact in the link between materialism values and consumers’ life satisfaction. The researcher adopted a quantitative research design and used a single-stage cluster sampling technique and mono method for data gathering through distributing a large-scale questionnaire instrument. The structural equation modelling (SEM) methodology was implemented. The findings confirmed that the model is specified and yields a fit. Results uncovered that amid Covid-19 pandemic, materialism and individual’s life satisfaction are insignificantly associated except for the happiness sub-component of materialism. Furthermore, the association between materialistic values and CBB is insignificant except for the happiness sub-component. There is an insignificant effect of CBB on individual’s life satisfaction. To add, CBB doesn’t mediate the relationship between materialism and individual’s life satisfaction. This entails that Egyptian consumers consider having possessions a source for happiness but not the core of success. They are engaged in compulsive consumption for happiness and this may not lead to life satisfaction. This implies that Covid-19 may have produced pressures on Egyptian consumers to seek happiness through buying behaviors. Consequently, marketers should have several interventions to the feelings of happiness and consumers’ general life satisfaction in their messages and social marketing campaigns.