Consumer behavior is a widely researched field with great interest in various countries and
different societies worldwide. Through the years, a lot of researches have tried to find out the
parameters and the expressions of this social phenomenon in order to explain the reasons an
individual presents a specific consumption behavior. As a result of their studies, they realized
that apart from other socialization agents probably the most important role in a person’s
consumer behavior plays the family which influences his or her compulsive consumption
behavior and materialism.
Specifically, studies in other countries (Moschis and Moore, 1984; Benmoyal‐Bouzagio and
Moschis, 2009; Shannon, et al., 2009) have proved the existence of a relationship between
the type and the structure of family and the behavior of young adults towards the compulsive
consumption and materialism. Thus, it is necessary to examine if Greek family also influences
a person‘s compulsive consumption behavior and materialism. Particularly, the aim of this
study is to understand the factors that lead to such attitudes, in which extent and how they
are connected with the structure of family in Greece.
In order to realize our study, the life course paradigm it was used as an overarching
framework and a number of factors have been proposed to analyze our data. Some of these
parameters are family stress, television viewing, religiosity, family support (tangible and
intangible), and self‐confidence, type of family orientation (socio or concept orientation),
peer communication about consumption, economic status, parents’ educational level and
other demographic data such as age, gender, numbers of family members.
Hypotheses derived from the life course perspectives are formulated and the data needed
were collected through a survey (e‐questionnaire), where young people from 19 to 39 years
old participated. Analytical results, with the assistance of SPSS are reported and explained
and conclusions are drawn.
Unfortunately, materialism was difficult to provide results in this research due to the lack of
reliability in the data. Nevertheless, compulsive consumption was studied extensively and the
results are presented. Basically, the majority of hypotheses were not supported but it was not
negligible the amount of findings that arose from this study and the suggestions for future
research.
There was also evidence for further investigation, which would be quite interesting. A similar
study which should be conducted and repeated, focusing particularly on adults’ materialism
and the parameters that contribute to its development, is suggested for future research.
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