Status Seeking Research Articles

Shop Often, Buy Little

Whilst the evolution of intermediaries and retail channels has been extensively researched, the reaction of consumers to newly evolved retail forms is not well understood. This paper investigates the reactions of Vietnamese consumers in Hanoi to the introduction of supermarket style retailing. Surveys show that these consumers have reacted positively to supermarkets, but consistently exhibit an inefficient pattern of buying few products (average 2.9) and shopping frequently (often more than three times per week). These findings support work conducted in other developing countries such as China and East Europe where similar patterns were observed. Qualitative research showed that the attraction of Vietnamese consumers to supermarkets can be explained by a combination of novelty seeking, a preference for fixed pricing and the desire for foreign brands. The high level of shopping frequency and low number of purchases resulted from a genuine enjoyment of shopping, a lack of planning and status seeking, not infrastructure or economic factors suggested by past researchers.

Foucault, Modernity, and the Cultural Study of Science

A generation after publication of Foucault's early works, of science remains among most conservative of human sciences. As a discipline, it often pays lip service to new theoretical approaches to history and yet still looks back lasciviously to internalist models of an objective science, rising and maturing during the Enlightenment. Any attempt to assess significance of Foucault's work both for and within of science thus encounters a crucial difficulty from start. As in other fields, Foucault is treated either as an icon, more invoked than studied seriously, or as a Rorschach test: for historians, to ignore his work is to fortify trenches abandoned by colleagues in other disciplines; to cite him is still to be accused of status seeking in up-tempo fields of literary and cultural theory.

Social organization, status, and savings behavior

We develop a model of status seeking in the presence of incomplete information and derive its implications for aggregate savings. Status seeking endogenously takes the form of conspicuous consumption. Its impact on savings depends on the scheduling of the contests for status over the life cycle. If individuals engage in conspicuous consumption when old, aggregate savings are increased. We also study the role of social segmentation. While social segmentation reduces the inequality across status seekers and fuels social rivalry under complete information, we show that under incomplete information, social segmentation weakens the incentive to strive for greater status.

Tipping customs and status seeking: a cross-country study

Tipping is a widespread custom in which service patrons give voluntary payments of money to the workers who have served them. This study found that tipping is more prevalent in countries the greater the value their citizens place on status/prestige. This finding suggests that tipping functions (in part) as a status display for consumers. Hospitality managers should keep this and other functions of tipping in mind when considering whether or not to permit tipping of their employees.

On relative wealth effects and the optimality of growth

We present a model of endogenous growth in which a desire for social status lead individuals to care about their relative wealth. The growth rate of the economy is socially optimal if the status motive is sufficiently important, but the presence of status seeking may also lead to excessive growth.

Relative standing comparisons, risk taking, and safety regulations

We study the question of how relative standing comparisons, or ‘status seeking’, influence risk taking. When utility is separable in consumption and status the following results apply. With non-systematic risks, more concern for status leads to more (less) risk taking when, in a sense made precise in the paper, the utility function is less (more) concave in status than in pure consumption. With systematic risk, risk taking always increases with the concern for status. However, status seeking always implies socially excessive risk taking, thus suggesting a role for public regulation of risky choices.

Demand for social status and the dynamics of consumer behavior

The article is concerned with the dynamics of status-seeking activities. Status seeking produces externalities since the improvement of the social status of one person implies the deterioration of the social status of at least one other person. This may have two effects. On the one hand, other people may be driven to increase their status seeking efforts and this implies a rat race or treadmill. On the other hand, there is a discouragement effect which makes people drop out of the treadmill. It is shown in a model of dynamic adjustments that the combination of these effects may lead to cyclical or chaotic patterns of demand for status goods.

Human status seeking is a Darwinian adaptation

Human status seeking is a Darwinian adaptation

Personality and labor force participation across the life course: A longitudinal study of women's careers

The influences on and consequences of women's labor force experience are examined using data from members of the Berkeley longitudinal studies born between 1920 and 1929. In adolescence, these women were overwhelmingly oriented toward marriage and family rather than career, yet more than two-thirds eventually spent substantial time in the paid labor force. Consistent labor force participation was lower for women who had been attractive, outgoing, feminine, self-confident, and status seeking in their high school years. High labor force participation, however, was associated with increases in self-confidence, status seeking, assertiveness, and intellectual investment between adolescence and later adulthood. The demographic correlates of labor force participation changed over the life course: as family responsibilities diminished in the later middle years, both family composition and husband's occupational status decreased in importance, while the importance of a woman's own education level and her husband's expected retirement income increased.

Efficient status seeking: Externalities, and the evolution of status games

Status-seeking games are games in which an individual's utility is determined by his relative expenditure on status-seeking activities rather than his absolute consumption. There are a number of parallels between status-seeking and rent-seeking activities, for example, a tendency for Pareto excessive private investment. However, many status-seeking activities differ from rent-seeking activities insofar as they generate significant benefits to individuals not actively involved in the game. Given an array of more or less productive status-seeking games, it is likely that relatively efficient status conferring mechanisms will tend to displace less efficient ones.

Positional goods, conspicuous consumption and the international demonstration effect reconsidered

Ragnar Nurkse's early formulation of the international demonstration effect explicitly eschewed the possibility that international emulation of the rich has anything to do with status seeking, or, to use Veblen's phrase, with conspicuous consumption. This paper argues in favor of a reassessment of Nurkse's formulation in the light, first, of recent analyses of advanced countries (by Hirsch, Frank and Scitovsky) which show the powerful welfare implications of consumption based on status seeking and in the light, second, of the large sociological literature that has investigated the modernization process in developing countries. The analysis casts doubt on Nurkse's eschewal of status-seeking behavior at the international level and suggests an alternative view with a profoundly different set of welfare implications for the Third World.

Buyer Behaviour and the Market for Status Goods

In recent years business organisations have recognised the great profits potential offered by the demand for status goods and have sought to encourage still higher levels of status seeking among consumers. To this end, many products are designed and promoted either wholly or partly as status symbols, with marketing strategies geared to securing rapid rates of social obsolescence in goods and services on offer. At the same time, we still know remarkably little about conspicuous consumption itself or about buyer behaviour in the market for status goods. This article examines the special characteristics of the conspicuous consumer and explores ways in which marketing planning may be improved.

Style in medical journals.

A study of medical journals from 1962 showed a constant preoccupation with style. Editors and contributors on both sides of the Atlantic revile unnecessary obscurity and complexity and the use of jargon, barbarisms, vogue words, and weak impersonal constructions. They bewail the pompous use of verbiage and the "medspeak" typified by acronyms and neologisms created by affixation. Suggestions for possible causes of poor medical style range from editorial demands for compression and a general ignorance of the principles of good writing to faulty logic and the subordination of communication to status seeking. The consequences of bad writing may include the fragmentation of knowledge, an increase in the importance of abstracting services, a trend towards free glossy medical newspapers, and, as remedial measures, workshops and courses in medical writing. Some implications for English language teachers working with foreign medical graduates and preclinical students are discussed.

Status Seekers in India: A sociological study of the neo-Buddhist movement

In every stratified society there are groups of people, mainly from the lower strata, who aspire to rise in social status. In order to realize their aspirations they adopt various means: some change their occupation for one carrying more prestige; some give their children a good education and try to place them in positions superior to their own; some emulate the behaviour and style of life of those whose higher status they aspire to reach; some try to gain admittance to the social circles mostly frequented by high-status people; some change their residence and some surround themselves with status symbols hoping that they will influence the ‘raters’ appraising them. For this process which goes on among various low-caste groups in India, Srinivas, an Indian sociologist, coined a separate term, ‘sanskritization’. With the opening of the doors by many under-developed societies for the introduction of modern technology and industrialization, status seeking has become one of the preoccupations of millions of people.

Measures of Motivation

Tested four new scales and replicated earlier findings of the Orientation and Motivation Inventory with 159 boys and 166 girls in four grades of a high school. Each of the 12 scales was subdivided for analyses into two halves. The intercorrelations among the 24 scale halves were analyzed by the method of principal components to identify 11 factors for boys and 10 for girls. Ten of the twelve postulated dimensions were confirmed in the varimax solution for each sex. A factor analysis of the correlations among the 12 scale scores disclosed five similar second order dimensions for boys and for girls. These were hypothesized to reflect Status Seeking, Belief in own Potency, Seeking and Helping People, Theoretical Interests. and Risk-Taking preference.

Value Categories for Australian Sport

It is a frequently vaunted thesis that Australia, per head of population, is the most sports conscious nation on earth. Intensive participation in sport is believed to reflect elements of a national ethos which emphasizes achievement, competitive and status seeking endeavour in a framework of egalitarianism or fraternal concern. Earlier research indicates that attitudes towards sport are directly related to the degree of primary and secondary involvement. 130 respondents defined as having a primary involvement in sport were asked to rank 23 value categories. Analysis of variance yielded no statistically significant differences between categories. It was concluded that the major value - orientation of the sample was towards achievement competitive forms of endeavour in sport. This was seconded by collective social experience orientations. These results were taken to be indicative of 1) a pervasive cultural definition of such themes, 2) the perceived instrumental value with which activities are regarded.

On the Personal Consequences of Alienation in Work

The consequences of alienation in work (i.e., engagement in work which is not intrinsically rewarding) are examined, using a random sample of the male work force in a Swedish community. The consequences are those commonly attributed to work alienation by critics of modern industrial society: intergroup hostility, anomia, political withdrawal, status seeking, and a sense of powerlessness. The notion that alienated labor eventuates in such outcomes receives little support here; the evidence suggests that this failure to confirm the generalization hypothesis is not attributable to methodological difficulties. The influence of social factors crucial to mass society theory (e.g., membership in an occupational community or in a work organization) is examined and found to be minimal. Finally, an alienated (extrinsic) orientation toward work is also unrelated to such variables as ethnic hostility, political engagement and powerlessness. The significance of these negative findings for images of work in contemporary society is discussed. T HE radical criticism of industrial society, from Marx to the moderns,' has centered its attack on alienation in work. The concern for alienated labor is perhaps the central theme in the literature on the mass society, a literature in which the craftsman's control over the work process and his