Article2007

Living in a celebrity‐mediated social world: the Chinese experience

76 citations0/0 files storedYoung Consumers Insight and Ideas for Responsible Marketers

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification Digital Marketing and Social Media Consumer Perception and Purchasing Behavior

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of peers and media celebrities on young people's endorsement of materialistic values in China. As the Chinese culture is said to be collective, it is expected that social relations, both personal and celebrity‐mediated, play an important role in the establishment of consumption values. Design/methodology/approach A survey of 299 university students in Beijing aged 18 to 24 was conducted using a structured questionnaire. Constructs were measured using established scales. Findings The paper finds that peer communication and susceptibility to peer influence were positively related to social comparison. Motivation for viewing advertisements was positively related to imitation of celebrity models. In turn, both social comparison and imitation of celebrity models were positive predictors of materialism. Research limitations/implications The city selected for this study is highly advanced in terms of economical and advertising development when compared with most other Chinese cities. Practical implications As the paper argues that materialism is a negative value orientation, the current study sheds light on de‐marketing to young consumers. Media educators should help young consumers to reflect on how their purchase decisions are influenced by the social relations, including both personal interaction and celebrity‐media communications. Discouraging upward social comparison and imitation of idols is expected to discourage the endorsement of materialistic values. Originality/value The paper offers insights about the complex patterns of youth attitudes in a former socialist society migrating to a capitalist society. It is a pioneer work on the study of influence of celebrities on materialistic value orientations.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 76 citations exist upstream.

References

1978Social Learning Theory.1954A Theory of Social Comparison Processes 1968Identity : Youth and Crisis. 1968 1959Identity and the life cycle 1992A Consumer Values Orientation for Materialism and Its Measurement: Scale Development and Validation 1989Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains.1989Perceived locus of causality and internalization: Examining reasons for acting in two domains.1989Measurement of Consumer Susceptibility to Interpersonal Influence

Cited by

2021“I want to be as trendy as influencers” – how “fear of missing out” leads to buying intention for products endorsed by social media influencers 2008Determinants for materialism among adolescents in Singapore 2021Country Differences in Determinants of Behavioral Intention towards Sustainable Apparel Products 2022Lifting the curtain on cultural values, materialism and luxury consumption: Evidence from Jordan 2012Young Saudi adults and peer group purchase influence: a preliminary investigation

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.