Status Seekers Research Articles

Karakteristik Hunian Bertinggal di Pinggiran Sungai Desa Kota Lintang Bawah, Aceh Tamiang

Providing housing with limited land reserves. With the increasing population, people use riverside land to build housing. River bank settlements are settlements that still exist today, even though many cases of evictions or natural disasters have occurred in these settlements. House buildings on the banks of rivers have Government Regulation Law article 5 paragraph 1 embankments that have not been completely flooded with a width of approximately 5 meters outward along the foot of the bank. The aim of the research is to find out the characteristics of residences on the banks of rivers to solve the problems that exist in the construction of residences in lower latitude urban villages, therefore requiring an approach to the physical use value of residences that is suitable for those with low incomes. The object of research taken from this research is residences located on the banks of the river in Kota Lintang Bawah Village, seen from residential mobility by knowing the characteristics of people in the world. According to John FC Turner, community characteristics are classified into three categories, namely bridgeheader, consolidator and status seeker. This research uses mixed methods. By getting in-depth information about the physical and non-physical forms of buildings located on the banks of rivers with low-income communities. Based on the research results, it shows that the characteristics of residences living on the banks of the river in the Village of Kota Lintang Bawah Aceh Tamiang are classified as bridgeheaders and consolidators.

Legibility and Burden: Representing Immigrants’ Winnable Claims to Humanitarian Status

In the United States, legal representation increases the likelihood that undocumented immigrants win legal claims. Yet private attorneys are expensive, and free and low-cost attorneys are scarce. How do legal services providers make representation decisions when demand outweighs capacity? Drawing on interviews with attorneys in thirty-eight nonprofit organizations who represent affirmative, humanitarian status seekers, this article describes how lawyers face pressure to represent winnable cases. Attorneys assess case winnability in two ways. First, attorneys aim to maximize clients’ cultural legibility as “deserving immigrant victims.” Simultaneously, attorneys aim to minimize case representation burden by considering the time, resources, and expertise needed to represent each claim. Attorneys assess both cultural legibility and case burden at every stage of the representation process (client selection, attorney assignment, relief pursual, and application production). In doing so, attorneys try to represent clients as the most deserving of status and in the most efficient way. These findings extend past research on attorneys’ selection processes that occur well before a client’s application is filed with the federal immigration bureaucracy. By highlighting how attorneys’ constrained decisions exacerbate legal stratification, these findings complicate calls for an immigrant legal inclusion strategy that depends on the labor of attorneys rather than on changes to the state’s demands on immigrants themselves.

Drivers of attitudes toward luxury and counterfeit products: the moderating role of interpersonal influence

PurposeThis study explores consumers' motivations to purchase luxury and counterfeit products using an international sample. In addition, it also examines the moderating role of interpersonal influence on this process. This study seeks to examine if the consumers who demand the highest quality express a preference for luxury goods over counterfeit goods.Design/methodology/approachSurvey research was employed to subjects from the USA, India, China and Russia. Responses from US and India consumers were collected using online software, whereas responses from China and Russia were collected with the help of a local market research firm.FindingsThe findings of the study indicate that consumers tend to show similar reactions based on the luxury and counterfeit consumption process examined here. In terms of interpersonal influence as a moderator, however, the study found it significantly impacts status seekers' attitude toward luxury and how a perfectionist shopper perceives counterfeit consumption.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first in the literature to empirically address both luxury and counterfeit consumption. Further it considers consumers from multiple countries with high levels of luxury good purchases.

What inhibits consumers in emerging countries from engaging in status consumption? A latent class conjoint analysis approach

PurposeThis paper aims to address how the status consumption tendency of consumers in emerging markets is negatively influenced by five individual traits: self-control, self-actualization, religiosity, future orientation and self-efficacy.Design/methodology/approachA conjoint experiment measured the importance of certain smartphone product attributes. A latent class regression analysis was then employed to estimate segment-level part-worths using conjoint data collected from 500 Bangladeshi consumers.FindingsThe results revealed three segments with members that differ in how they evaluate smartphone product attributes. Those susceptible to a product's brand name (i.e. status seekers) appear to have low self-control, are less religious and are more myopic.Research limitations/implicationsAn issue may exist with generalizability, as the analysis was conducted based on data collected in one country and for one product category. However, this study's framework provides direction for future researchers to better understand status consumption in emerging countries.Practical implicationsThe findings are useful for marketers selling status products to improve market segmentation and target their offerings more efficiently.Originality/valueThe originality of this paper is twofold. First, it investigates the influencing factors of status consumption that have not been addressed in the extant literature. Second, it is the first to use experimental data to measure segment-level status consumption accurately.

The differential effects of time and usage on the brand premiums of automobiles

We investigate how the status and functional benefits of cars’ brands lose value over time. Theoretically, we show that brands with a higher status, or that appeal to status-conscious consumers, exhibit steeper price decline over time. Empirically, we take advantage of the phenomenon of twin cars – pairs of car models that are nearly identical from a structural and mechanical standpoint, but that are sold under differing brand names – to disentangle the effects of physical wear and tear, which should impact both the premium brand and the corresponding standard brand similarly; and time-related price decline, which should affect each brand differently. The main result is that a premium car’s price declines much faster than that of the corresponding standard car (controlling for physical condition, mileage, and initial price). This result suggests that status declines faster than do functional attributes, and status seekers tend to replace their cars earlier.

Identification of psychological factors associated with car ownership decisions of young adults: Case study of Jodhpur city, India

In the context of a developing country, not many studies have attempted to examine the attitudinal factors that influence the car ownership decisions of young adults. The present study aims to identify the pertinent psychological factors and their effects, along with demographic variables, upon car ownership decisions. The study used 813 individuals’ responses to employ a principal component analysis and subsequent binary logit model to determine the future car ownership decisions. The major findings show that the individuals who are status seekers, image-conscious, passionate for cars, obsessed with cars, and influenced by peers/external factors are more likely to buy a car in the near future. However, those who are conscious about paying high taxes, environmental sustainability and traffic problems are less likely to buy a car in the near future. The results of this study can help transport planners and policymakers to develop and implement transport policies that could potentially discourage the use and ownership of cars in order to develop sustainable mobility patterns in the future.

Status, Stratified Rights, and Accommodation in International Relations

AbstractDenied status claims can produce serious interstate conflict and accommodation may thus be an important means of avoiding conflict with rising and reemerging status seekers such as China and Russia. But accommodation is an underdeveloped concept. This article draws on scholarship about recognition and hierarchy to propose a novel means of understanding status accommodation: as behavior that sends signals to status seekers about the validity of claims to stratified rights. This framework implies that acts that signal status denial (and thus cause conflict over status) may be driven by three broad kinds of processes: anxiety about a state's position in the world; incompatibility between nonstatus interests and claims to status-implicated rights; and fears about the implications of status accommodation for the validity of discourses and ideas that produce both international and domestic order. These dynamics—especially the latter two—may be linked to domestic political mechanisms and concerns in ways that analysts do not fully appreciate. I illustrate the framework by examining the forces that drove the United States to deny Japanese claims to equal status during the decades before World War II.

Other-regarding preferences in organizational hierarchies

In this paper, we provide new theoretical insights about the role of collusion in organizational hierarchies by combining the standard principal–supervisor–agent framework with a theory of social preferences. Extending Tirole’s (J Law Econ Organ 2(2):181–214, 1986) model of hierarchy with the inclusion of Fehr and Schmidt (Q J Econ 114(3):817–868, 1999) type of other-regarding preferences, the links between inequity aversion, collusive behavior and changes in optimal contracts are studied. It turns out that other-regarding preferences do change the collusive behavior among parties depending on the nature of both agent’s and supervisor’s other-regarding preferences. The most prominent impact is on the optimal effort levels. When the agent is inequity averse, the principal can exploit this fact to make agent exert higher effort level than she would otherwise. In order to satisfy the participation constraint of the supervisor, the effort level induced for the agent becomes lower when the supervisor is status seeker, and it is higher when the supervisor is inequity averse.

The Trans-Pacific Status Seekers across the Straits: American suburban status United Taiwan and China

Disregard the divided national status, this paper explores in more depth the role status plays in the transnational process of suburbanizing Taiwan and China. It describes how the social homogenous American suburb is becoming the most influential force within new developments in Taiwan. It records the stories of astronaut engineer families and these new 'model developments' and how status objects like lower density suburbs, homogeneity segregated and gated enclaves removed from existing city centers have arisen in Hsinchu, Taiwan and Shanghai, China.

Residential Mobility di Pinggiran Kota Semarang Jawa Tengah (Studi Kasus Kaum Miskin Kota di Kota Semarang)

This research was aimed in analyzing and examining the development of slum residential in Semarang, including its center of the city urban, urban-fringe and sub-urban area. Within the development of the slum residential due to mobility of the urban poor, the phenomenon in the term of residential mobility occurred. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, this research was applying distant-interpretation data in examining slum residential phenomenon and terrestrial data in analyzing both social and cultural issues related to development of slum residential. This research resulting a residential mobility model throughout areas of research, especially sub-urban including the Chinese cemetery area; the new migrant was the urbanist namely the bridge headers group, consists of tramp and hobos whom should be concerned more. Though they just have settled in short-period within the area, their income was categorized financially settled. They owned their own home not as the renter and even, built housing for their subordinates amounted 7-15 families in a complex of residential. Stability of the income was also supported by resident-owning whereas selecting its location based on the land-availability which initially settled the location illegally among the graves. This location was selected since its less-maintained condition by neither their descendant nor cemetery officer which then densely covered by bushes. Availability of the sufficient land leads them to build their residential which also used as the scrap collection space. During the times, their number was increased referred to their raising income. Legalizing their residential was the next step for their existence and sustainability by purchasing or renting the land. Eventually this bridge header was earning a stable income, owning their own home, and locating their residential in the sub-urban area furthermore but unfortunately less-supported by a highly established life style but an early category one . These were indicated by several factors, either employer or subordinate tramps which cooking foods altogether, unfashionably worn, and behavior of their youngster of asking consideration and advice to the consolidator and status seeker.

Status insecurity and temporality in world politics

International Relations scholars concerned with explaining status-seeking behavior in the international system draw heavily from social comparison theory and its observations that individuals judge their worth, and accordingly derive self-esteem, through social comparisons with others. According to this logic, states become status seekers because, like individuals, they have an innate desire for favorable social status comparisons relative to their peers. Thus, the great power status literature is often framed in the language of accommodation, and adjustment, which presupposes that status insecurities develop from unfavorable social comparisons and can be resolved through relative social improvements. This article challenges these assumptions by noting, as psychology has acknowledged for some time, that individuals use both social and temporal forms of comparison when engaging in self-evaluation. Where social comparisons cause actors to ask “How do I rank relative to my peers?” temporal comparisons cause actors to evaluate how they have improved or declined over time. This article advances a temporal comparison theory of status-seeking behavior, suggesting that many of the signaling problems associated with status insecurity emerge from basic differences in how states evaluate their status, and whether they privilege temporal over social comparisons. The implications are explored through China’s contemporary struggle for status recognition, situating this struggle within the context of China’s civilizational past and ongoing dispute over Taiwan.

A Study on the Impact of Visual Merchandising on Impulse Purchase in Apparel Retail Stores

Conspicuous consumption involves the overt display of possessions that denote wealth and status, to communicate a distinctive self-image to others. Here, product satisfaction is often derived from audience reaction as opposed to utility from product use. Materialism is the importance a consumer attaches to worldly possessions. Materialists place possessions and their acquisition at the centre of their lives. Several studies have established that various personality traits such as materialism and social factors like susceptibility to social influence explain conspicuous consumption. This paper examines the extent of influence of materialism on conspicuous consumption tendencies of a convenience sample of 640 emigrants from Kerala. The study validates that materialism significantly relates to conspicuous consumption which means materialism is positively related to buying products that confer status. It is also seen to be instrumental in triggering conspicuous consumption among the expatriate community. Variation in conspicuous consumption with respect to gender, age, education, occupation, and income levels are also examined. The study provides interesting insights for marketers in developing consumer-centric approach towards product-development, pricing and promotions and also assists in psychographic segmentation of status seekers. It proposes means to develop and manage meaningful engagement with consumers by exhorting marketers to assume greater social responsibility and focus on societal outcomes stemming from promoting a lifestyle centred on materialism and conspicuous displays of wealth.

A Study on the Role of Materialism in Triggering Conspicuous Consumption among Emigrants from Kerala

Conspicuous consumption involves the overt display of possessions that denote wealth and status, to communicate a distinctive self-image to others. Here, product satisfaction is often derived from audience reaction as opposed to utility from product use. Materialism is the importance a consumer attaches to worldly possessions. Materialists place possessions and their acquisition at the centre of their lives. Several studies have established that various personality traits such as materialism and social factors like susceptibility to social influence explain conspicuous consumption. This paper examines the extent of influence of materialism on conspicuous consumption tendencies of a convenience sample of 640 emigrants from Kerala. The study validates that materialism significantly relates to conspicuous consumption which means materialism is positively related to buying products that confer status. It is also seen to be instrumental in triggering conspicuous consumption among the expatriate community. Variation in conspicuous consumption with respect to gender, age, education, occupation, and income levels are also examined. The study provides interesting insights for marketers in developing consumer-centric approach towards product-development, pricing and promotions and also assists in psychographic segmentation of status seekers. It proposes means to develop and manage meaningful engagement with consumers by exhorting marketers to assume greater social responsibility and focus on societal outcomes stemming from promoting a lifestyle centred on materialism and conspicuous displays of wealth.

Regulating the Environmental Consequences of Preferences for Social Status within an Evolutionary Framework

Taking as given that we are consuming too much and that overconsumption leads to environmental degradation, the present paper examines the regulator's choices between informative advertisement and consumption taxation. We model overconsumption by considering individuals that care about social status apart from the intrinsic utility, derived from direct consumption. We assume that there also exist individuals that care only about their own private consumption and we examine the evolution of preferences through time by allowing individuals to alter their behavior as a result of a learning process, akin to a replicator dynamics type. We consider the regulator's choice of consumption taxation and informative advertisement both in an arbitrary and an optimal control context. In the arbitrary overconsumption control context we find that the regulator could decrease, or even eliminate, the share of status seekers in the population. In the context of optimal overconsumption control, we show that the highest welfare is attained when status seekers are completely eliminated, while the lowest in the case that the entire population consists of status seekers.

Making Sense of Radicalization

The self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) burning to deathof Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasba and beheading of twenty-one Egyptiansin Libya are just the latest incidents in a series of escalating acts of violencethat epitomize the seemingly senseless carnage that so often results from thepolitical radicalization of individual Muslims. As the international media zeroesin on such instances, one often struggles to make sense of the perpetrators’true motives. But understanding the circumstances that lead up to such viciousnessis key if governments are to minimize such acts in the future.What motivates an individual to join a terrorist organization? Is it ideology,politics, poverty, or something else? What might be done to de-radicalize anindividual who has joined a terrorist group? The reality is that there is no singlepathway toward radicalization. In a May 2010 report entitled “Why Youth Joinal-Qaeda,”1 U.S. Army Colonel Matt Venhaus suggested that those seeking tojoin jihadist networks can be divided into revenge seekers needing an outletfor their frustration, status seekers needing recognition, identity seekers in needof a group to join, and thrill seekers looking for adventure.2 Clearly the motivesfor terrorism are differentiated and complex, as opposed to uniform and simple.Thus identifying an overarching pattern to understanding how individualsmight become susceptible to terrorist recruiters and what intervention strategiescan be employed to stop it becomes a very difficult task ...

The American Dream: A Cultural History by Lawrence R. Samuel (review)

Reviewed by: The American Dream: A Cultural History by Lawrence R. Samuel Tess Evans (bio) The American Dream: A Cultural History. By Lawrence R. Samuel. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Pp. 241. $24.95 cloth) James Truslow Adams coined the term, “American Dream” in his book, The Epic of America (1931), which explores how the concept of “American” evolved throughout our history and argues for a vision of what the American Dream should be. In The American Dream: A Cultural History, Lawrence R. Samuel takes up where Adams left off to present a myriad of perspectives that have shaped and reshaped the definition of the American Dream over the past eighty years. Samuel acknowledges not only the existence of the American Dream prior to 1931 but also its tenacity, arguing “that the term ‘American Dream’ was created in the darkest days of the Great Depression was all the more interesting given that many feared it no longer existed” (p. 13). Given that the nation is experiencing the next-worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the American Dream is a timely topic to revisit. In The American Dream, Samuel has created a chronological collage of quotes and discussion on the subject, as presented by journalists mostly in print media. Between the introduction and the conclusion, Samuel has divided the years from 1931 to 2011 into roughly “six eras of mythology” covering six chapters. “The Epic of America” is the era of the Great Depression, which left Americans dreaming for some version of “Sunnyville,” a mythical place with few social or economic problems. “The Status Seekers” era is the postwar drive towards financial gain and materialism, as Americans tried to forget years of thrift and sacrifice. “The Anti-Paradise” is an era of counterculture resistance to the strains of the Vietnam War, economic recession, the energy crisis, and racial issues. “Born in the U.S.A.” is an era of renewed patriotism and optimism sparked by the Reagan years, when recessions were persistent [End Page 274] and yet expectations continued to rise. “The Anxious Society” is an era of the 1990s boom times that, ironically, left Americans feeling less in control over their lives. Finally, “American Idol” is the era that ushered in the highs-and-lows of the early twenty-first century, with the resilience of the American Dream as its theme. Samuel’s predominant use of discussions in the popular media as the barometer of the Dream clearly indicates an attempt to appeal to a mainstream audience less interested in complex analysis than in a practical synopsis of trends in American culture. Most of the citations within the work come from print sources, especially major newspapers. The New York Times dominates the discussion with more than one hundred citations. The next-most-cited source is the Los Angeles Times, with less than fifty references, followed by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and the Hartford Courant, with less than thirty references each. Published commentary about the “American Dream” is the focus of Samuel’s study, rather than editorial and advertising content appealing to the ever-shifting Dream. By limiting his sources to these discussions, rather than analyzing more tangible manifestations of the American Dream, Samuel’s own discussion becomes at times difficult to follow. He does try to clarify abstract concepts by reverting to material symbols; for example, the achievement of racial equality is discussed in terms of whether barriers to suburban neighborhoods are removed so that African Americans can buy houses there. In his effort to take on the whole concept of the American Dream over such a long time frame in such a short work, rather than focus on one aspect or one moment in time, Samuel presents an entertaining, if surface-skimming, overview. Yet The American Dream is a timely effort to generate discussion about the future of the Dream in a nation still reeling from recent economic setbacks. [End Page 275] Tess Evans Tess Evans graduated from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, in 2012 with a PhD in rhetoric and composition. Her dissertation, “The Persuasion of Many within a Moderate Length of Time,” examines the intersections of classical, religious, and scientific rhetoric during the rise...

The Trans-Pacific Status Seekers: Dialogue and Discontent of Transnational Suburbanization

This paper explores in more depth the role status plays in the transnational process of suburbanizing Taiwan and China. It describes how the social homogenous American suburb is becoming the most influential force within new developments in Taiwan. In particularly, it looks at housing developments for high technology engineers, many of who studied and or lived and worked in the Silicon Valley. It records the stories of these engineer families and these new “model developments” and how status objects like lower density suburbs, homogeneity¸ segregated and gated enclaves removed from existing city centers have arisen in Hsinchu, Taiwan and Shanghai, China.

Honor and The Performance of Roman State Identity

Principate. 1 The argument advanced proposes the Roman world was ensconced by a metavalue of honor that significantly shaped the personal identities of Rome’s aristocratic decision-making classes. Competition for honor subsumed aristocratic life and shaped not only the personal identities of the elite, but also the persona of the Roman state. The Romans extrapolated their psychological framework, in which the stratification of domestic society rested on personal identities of honor, to their outlook on foreign policy. Akin to their domestic lives, those executing foreign policy conceptualized Rome as engaged in a status competition for honor with the polities existing its world system. Preserving and enhancing one’s honor relative to others was fundamental in domestic life, and this was also the state’s primary objective in relation to all others. The identity of the Roman state, therefore, was an aggressive status seeker. A survey of historical world systems reveals a variety of cultural and institutional environments. The way historically situated actors conceptualize the nature of international relations often depends upon these contexts, as is the content of legitimate foreign policy. Reus-Smit (1997, 1999) argues that historical world systems are embedded in constitutional structures. These are normative complexes comprising metavalues that provide foundations for the fundamental institutions operating in differing world systems. For instance, those undergirding multilateralism in the modern era and the system of dispute arbitration among the ancient Greek city-state system. This article builds on Reus-Smit’s basic insight that cultural environments shape institutional type. However, instead of fundamental institutions, the focus here explores how cultural environments influence personal and subsequently state identity. Constructivists have advanced the field of International Relations (IR) regarding the sources and dynamics of state identity. State identity is fundamental because it indicates how we should expect states to act and makes intelligible the types of policies they pursue. Constructivists locate the sources of state identity in many places, including national discourses, international norms and practices, and the collective notions of Self shared among states. However, constructivists 1

Consumer‐based brand equity and status‐seeking motivation for a global versus local brand

PurposeThe purpose of this research is to explore how a successful global and a local brand may compete side by side in an existing market place based on consumer‐based brand equity and consumers' status‐seeking motivation for purchasing a global versus local brand.Design/methodology/approachThe data for this research were collected through a self‐administered survey from students in a large Western Australian university.FindingsThe results show that a global brand is generally preferred in terms of all the dimensions of consumer‐based brand equity over a local brand. However, a significant interaction emerged between the type of brand and high versus low status‐seeking motivation consumers. A global brand is strongly favoured in terms of awareness, perceived quality and overall brand equity by high status seekers while a local brand seems to enjoy loyalty and overall brand equity among low status seekers. A global brand is also clearly preferred over a local brand along all dimensions of consumer‐based brand equity amongst high status‐seeking consumers. Further, a local brand is clearly preferred in terms of consumer‐based brand equity over the global brand by Australians whereas the global brand remains a clear favourite with non‐Australians.Research limitations/implicationsFindings may not generalize beyond Australian sample and the product category.Originality/valueThis empirical research explores how global and local brands may compete with each other based on their strengths. This research also addresses a theoretical gap identified by Yoo and Donthu.

Status Seekers: Chinese and Russian Responses to U.S. Primacy

The United States needs support from other states to carry out global governance, particularly from rising powers such as China and Russia. Securing cooperation from China and Russia poses special problems, however, because neither state is part of the liberal Western community, ruling out appeals to common values and norms. Nevertheless, an alternative approach that is rooted in appreciation of China's and Russia's heightened status concerns may be viable. Since the end of the Cold War, Chinese and Russian foreign policy has been shaped by the goal of restoring both countries' great power status, which received major blows after China's Tiananmen Square repression and the Soviet Union's breakup and loss of empire. This desire for status can be explained by social identity theory, which argues that social groups strive for a distinctive, positive identity. Social identity theory provides a typology of strategies that states may use to enhance their relative status and suggests appropriate responses to status concerns of rising powers. Redirecting scholarly attention to status considerations and incentives could contribute to a diplomatic strategy for engaging rising powers.