How Family Resources Affect Materialism and Compulsive Buying: A Cross-Country Life Course Perspective

We test a theoretical model that explains the development of materialistic beliefs and compulsive buying. The model uses the life course framework, a paradigm that has recently been given attention in the marketing literature. To address the calls of prior consumer researchers, we investigate how these consumption orientations develop in 3 country contexts: the United States, France, and Brazil. We assess the level of measurement invariance and evaluate the model. Findings support family resources playing a mediating role between childhood family disruptions and young adulthood consumption orientations; they are relatively consistent across countries and suggest that some life course explanation of the two consumption orientations may be similar across diverse cultural settings.