All that Glitters is Gold: Conspicuous Sensory Consumption as a Means for Self-Worth Restoration

Sensory consumption is understood to be consumption of products or experiences that engages the senses of the consumer; a consumption experience that is processed through one or more of the five sensory modalities of taste, vision, sound, smell and touch (Krishna 2011). In this research we investigate how consumers can use heightened sensory consumption as a means of restoration of their feelings of self-worth. The relationship between need for status or self-esteem, and the use of conspicuous consumption as a compensatory mechanism is well established (Charles, Hurst and Roussanov 2009; Rucker and Galinsky 2008, 2009). In conspicuous consumption, compensatory consumption has involved a heightened engagement of only one of the five senses, vision (Dubois, Rucker, and Galinsky 2010, 2012). In this work we investigate: 1) Do individuals facing self-threat only consume conspicuously when products have clear status-enhancing visual attributes like brand name and logo, or does this preference for visually conspicuous products operate at a more basic sensory level, void of contextual status-cues such as brand? 2) Do individuals facing self-threat also seek more conspicuous consumption along other sensory domains? Contrary to the spirit of conspicuous consumption which deals with visible consumption in the visual domain, we propose that a threat to one’s self-worth would result in compensatory effects even in consumption experiences which are not publicly visible, thus proposing that conspicuous sensory consumption- defined by us as need for heightened engagement across different sensory domains- may be a means for self-worth restoration as well (Sivanthan and Pettit 2010).