The Variances of Consumers’ Materialistic Personality Traits and Reduced Consumption Behavior Among Demographics in Egypt

Abstract

Throughout the consumer behavior’s field, comprehending materialism across different countries has been of critical importance to transformative consumer research authors, marketers and policy makers. Materialism was discussed with its pros and cons in previous studies. However, present conflicting results exist across various contexts about its effects on socially responsible behavior. Nevertheless, the past studies included vast research on materialistic values, they embraced a limited research scope regarding the materialistic personality traits (MPT) and their influence on consumers’ sustainable behavior. This study tests the validity and reliability of Belk’s materialistic personality traits scale in Egypt, as one of the influential and mass consumer societies in the Arab region. It contributes towards understanding the influence of materialism as a personality trait on reduced consumption behavior and whether these dimensions vary among age, gender and place of residence. Large scale survey instrument was distributed across Egypt using quota non-random sampling which yielded 540 respondents. Plausible findings revealed significant effects of the materialistic personality traits on the reduced consumption behavior and indicated variances across the denoted demographics. This will help marketers and policy makers better describe and target the consumers’ materialistic personalities through designing effective communication that develops a pro-sustainable consumption behavior to bring about a change for a sustainable future. Keywords: Materialism; Belk materialism Scale; materialistic personality traits; pro-sustainable behavior; possessiveness; envy; non-generosity; reduced consumption behavior; demographics DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/88-02 Publication date: January 31 st 2023