Events

Professor Tina Lowrey
Professor of Marketing
HEC Paris

ABSTRACT

Changing residences is common for many consumers, and frequent moving has been shown to have important psychological and behavioral effects. The current research investigates the impact of residential mobility on the extent to which consumers engage in keeping-up behaviors–consumption (typically status-related) that is motivated by the desire to avoid status loss within the material domain. Based on theory and research showing that residential mobility affects the structure and strategies of social networks such that more mobile networks are associated with weaker norm strength, across five studies, we test the proposition that residentially mobile (vs. stable) consumers will engage in less keeping-up behavior because they socially compare less. Studies 1A and 1B use U.S. Census Bureau and Google Trends data to show that US state-level residential mobility is negatively related to the size of the US state-level jewelry industry (Study 1A) and search interest in luxury brands and social comparison words (Study 1B). Study 2 shows that measured residential mobility negatively correlates with prestige sensitivity, and Studies 3 and 4 manipulate residential mobility to show that residential mobility (vs. stability) leads to less motivation and interest in keeping-up behaviors and social comparison tendencies.