Abstract:
The modern day person is involved in vicarious consumption patterns in order to
showcase wealth, enhance prestige, and attract others’ attention through
conspicuousness, exclusiveness, and emulation. We live in a society where
consuming expensive goods is accepted as a mark of superior status. Yet, too little
scholarly attention has been devoted to this obtrusive consumer desire in Sri Lanka
and elsewhere in the world. In light of this, the purpose of this study is to explore
what the authors denote as ‘decorative consumption’ and to examine the impact of
socio-demographic factors on such consumption in terms of conspicuousness,
snobbism, and conformism. This paper reports the outcomes of an exploratory survey
conducted with 250 employees working within the Colombo city limits, to examine
the concept of decorative consumption with regard to different ages, genders, sectors,
religions, and income categories. The data gathered were analysed using SPSS
(Version 20.0). The results highlighted that the socio-demographic factor ‘sector’ has
a strong impact on the decorative consumption of wristwatches among employees
working in Colombo as it is prone towards decorativeness in all three dimensions:
conspicuousness, snobbism, and conformism. The results also revealed that ‘age’ and
‘religion’ could impact decorative consumption of wristwatches in the dimensions of
conspicuousness and snobbism, whereas ‘monthly income’ is prone to influence
decorative consumption in the dimensions of conspicuousness and conformism. The
noteworthy outcomes that men appear to be more snobbish than women, and
employees within the lowest income cohort are equally conspicuous and conformist
as those in the richest income cohort, warrant further research to identify their causal
factors.
