The impact of a wife's budgetary and romantic attitudes towards luxury goods on their self-purchases and purchases made for them by their husbands

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between a wife's attitudes toward personal luxury goods (i.e., luxury products and services used by her only) and the amount she and her husband spend on such goods for her. Concepts of intrapersonal conflict theory are used to develop a set of hypotheses regarding these relationships. Using diary panel data of diamond jewelry acquisitions for a panel of wives, we model the amount husbands spend on diamond jewelry for their wives, and the amount wives spend on diamond jewelry for themselves, as a function of two latent attitudes of the wives as revealed in the data, specifically romantic attitudes and budgetary attitudes about diamond jewelry. Our results demonstrate the importance of marketers to consider wives' attitudes about personal luxury goods as a means to increase the total expenditures by both spouses on such products.