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The interpersonal processes are dependent on the individual's attending to and
acting upon the beliefs, thoughts and expectations of others. The influence that others
have on individual decisions is often due to the person's concern or caring about
reactions to his/her behavior. As per Miniard and Cohen's (1983) saying, "to the extent
that consumers' behavior is influenced by concerns over what others might think
of them or how others might act towards them functions as a product choice and
usage, the identification and separation of normative from personal reasons
for preferring a product would appear to be quite useful" (Bearden and Rose, 1990).
It is possible to make predictions concerning the relative importance
of interpersonal antecedents of consumers' purchase intensions by
measuring consumers' predisposition to act on
social cues available at the time a purchase or consumption decision is being
made (Bearden and Rose, 1990). In this paper, the objective is to explore the behavior
of consumers towards the consumption habits either as status seeking or role relaxed.
The construct is derived from Kahle's (1995a and 1995b) role-relaxed consumer scale.
Festinger (1954) hypothesized that individuals have a basic drive to
evaluate their own opinions and abilities based on social comparison theory. Festinger
thought that individuals compare their opinions and abilities with those of others and
that the comparison may affect self-evaluation (Lee et al., 2000).Festinger (1954) also postulated that social behavior
is predicated on the assumption that individuals seek a sense of normalcy
and accuracy about their world and that individuals affiliate more with others
when they desire others' views about their own thoughts and behavior (Himsel
and Goldberg, 2003).In the social
comparison theory, the emphasis is on the use of
others to evaluate how well one is doing something or to assess the appropriateness of
one's opinions as an original idea (Buunk,
2005).
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