Evlilik Öncesi Alışverişte Kişisel Değerlerin, Hedonik ve Faydacı Tüketimin Sosyal Karşılaştırma Üzerine Etkisi

Abstract

Values are the set of standards that guide persons throughout their life. Values that are central to individuals' lives also play an important role in their consumption preferences and purchasing decisions process. Today, the consumer does not consider only rational benefit when purchasing a product or a brand, but also aims to obtain emotional benefits such as happiness and pleasure. The consumer is also affected by what other people think while making a purchasing decision for the product and the brand; uses their attitudes and behaviors as criteria by comparing them with other individuals. Social and cultural changes from past to present have deeply affected the phenomenon of marriage and consumption in many aspects. The developments experienced have caused changes in individuals' attitudes and behaviors towards consumption that wedding shopping process and before. To that end, it is essential to determining for consumer consumption preference, and is necessary to know the effects of personal values, hedonic and utilitarian consumption tendencies on social comparison in which compare themselves with others. This research aims to identify the effects of personal values, hedonic and utilitarian consumption on social comparison concerning wedding shopping, and introduces a model to achieve this aim. Data were collected through the online questionnaire. The participants, selected via snowball sampling on social media were requested to complete the questionnaire through iMessage and Whatsapp. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the relationship between variables in the model. The analyses suggest that hedonic and utilitarian consumption have an impact on social comparison but personal values don’t. On the other hand, it has been found that consumer's experiences that marriage shopping is on the basis of hedonic or utilitarian consumption become different according to gender and education level. In addition to this, there is a significant relationship between the consumers' apply for bank loans and the level of comparing themselves to other individuals.