Why women desire conspicuous luxury romatics gifts?

Doctoral dissertation in Business Administration

WHY WOMEN DESIRE CONSPICUOUS

LUXURY ROMANTIC GIFTS?

-THE MEDIATING ROLE OF “BEING LOVED” SOCIAL COMPARISON￾Department of Business Administration, Major in Marketing

Tran Thi Tuyet

Supervised by Professor Choi, Jinmyung

August, 2018

Graduate School of Daegu University

WHY WOMEN DESIRE CONSPICUOUS

LUXURY ROMANTIC GIFTS?

-THE MEDIATING ROLE OF “BEING LOVED” SOCIAL COMPARISON￾In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of

Philosophy in Business Administration

Department of Business Administration, Major in Marketing

Tran Thi Tuyet

Supervised by Professor Choi, Jinmyung

Confirming Tran Thi Tuyet’s doctoral dissertation in Business Administration

August, 2018

Chairman of Screening ________________ (Signature)

Member of Screening __________________(Signature)

Member of Screening _________________ (Signature)

Member of Screening _________________ (Signature)

Member of Screening _________________ (Signature)

Graduate School of Daegu University

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................... 1

1. Research motivation .....................................................................................1

2. Purpose and method of study ........................................................................3

II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ........................................................ 4

1. Women’s desire for romantic gifts.................................................................4

2. Evolutionary psychology of women’s desire .................................................6

3. Intrasexual competition and women’s desire for romantic gifts .....................7

4. Mate retention and women’s desire for luxury romantic gifts......................10

5. “Being loved” social comparison ................................................................13

6. Hypotheses.................................................................................................16

III. EMPIRICAL STUDY............................................................................ 20

1. Study 1 .......................................................................................................20

1) Method.................................................................................................... 20

2) Result and discussion ................................................................................ 27

2. Study 2 .......................................................................................................30

1) Method.................................................................................................... 30

2) Result and discussion ................................................................................ 41

3. Study 3 .......................................................................................................54

1) Method.................................................................................................... 54

2) Result and discussion ................................................................................ 58

IV. CONCLUSION ....................................................................................... 79

1. General discussion......................................................................................79

2. Implications and Conclusion.......................................................................80

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3. Limitations and Future Directions...............................................................82

REFERENCES.............................................................................................. 84

ABSTRACT...................................................................................................... 93

APPENDIX 1.................................................................................................... 94

APPENDIX 2.................................................................................................... 95

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Sample Characteristics......................................................................... 22

Table 2. Manipulation check for feeling closeness, luxury goods, and scenario

quality ............................................................................................................... 26

Table 3. Descriptive statistics for “being loved” perception................................ 28

Table 4. Tests of Between-Subjects Effects........................................................ 29

Table 5. Sample characteristics.......................................................................... 32

Table 6. “Being loved” comparison elicited by three conditions......................... 35

Table 7. Luxury goods evaluation between two conditions................................. 35

Table 8. Scenario quality ................................................................................... 36

Table 9. Rotated Component Matrix of product items........................................ 37

Table 10. Conspicuous and inconspicuous luxury goods construct reliability ..... 38

Table 11. Rotated component matrix of luxury cosmetics................................... 39

Table 12. (in)Conspicuous luxury cosmetics construct reliability....................... 39

Table 13. Descriptive statistics for “being loved” comparison............................ 41

Table 14. Descriptive statistics for women’s conspicuous goods desire .............. 43

Table 15. Descriptive statistics for women’s inconspicuous goods desire ........... 44

Table 16. Descriptive statistics for women’s conspicuous cosmetics desire ........ 44

Table 17. Descriptive statistics for women’s inconspicuous cosmetics desire ..... 45

Table 18. Regression results of simple mediation (a).......................................... 47

Table 19. Regression results of simple mediation (b) ......................................... 49

Table 20. Regression results of simple mediation (c).......................................... 51

Table 21. Regression results of simple mediation (d) ......................................... 53

Table 22. Descriptive statistics for “being loved” comparison............................ 59

Table 23. Descriptive statistics for women’s conspicuous goods desire .............. 60

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Table 24. Regression results of simple mediation (e).......................................... 63

Table 25. Descriptive statistics for women’s conspicuous goods desire (b)......... 65

Table 26. Descriptive statistics for women’s inconspicuous goods desire ........... 66

Table 27. Descriptive statistics for women’s conspicuous goods buying............. 66

Table 28. Descriptive statistics for women’s inconspicuous goods buying.......... 67

Table 29. Regression results of simple mediation (f).......................................... 69

Table 30. Regression results of simple mediation (g) ......................................... 73

Table 31. Regression results of simple mediation (h) ......................................... 75

Table 32. Regression results of simple mediation (i) .......................................... 77

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Effect of comparison target’s luxury romantic gift on “Being loved”

perception.......................................................................................................... 29

Figure 2. Proposed model (a)............................................................................. 40

Figure 3. Effect of luxury gift on “being loved” comparison.............................. 42

Figure 4. Effect of luxury gift on women’s conspicuous goods desire ................ 43

Figure 5. Mediated model for effect of luxury gift on women’s conspicuous goods

desire via “being loved” comparison.................................................................. 48

Figure 6. Proposed model (b)............................................................................. 57

Figure 7. Effect of competitiveness of social network on “being loved”

comparison........................................................................................................ 59

Figure 8. Effect of competitiveness of social network on women’s conspicuous

goods desire (a) ................................................................................................. 61

Figure 9. Mediated model for effect of competitiveness of social network on

women’s conspicuous goods desire via “being loved” comparison (a) ............... 64

Figure 10. Effect of competitiveness of social network on women’s conspicuous

goods desire (b)................................................................................................. 65

Figure 11. Mediated model for effect of competitiveness of social network on

women’s conspicuous goods desire via “being loved” comparison (b) ............... 71

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Why Women Desire Conspicuous Luxury Romantic Gifts?

-The Mediating Role of Being Loved Social Comparison￾Tran Thi Tuyet

Department of Business Administration

Graduate School, Daegu University

Gyeongbuk Korea

Supervised by Professor Choi, Jinmyung

(Abstract)

Can close friends’ luxury romantic gifts (from romantic partners) affect other women’s

consumption of luxury goods? This study examines whether a woman’s luxury gift affects her

same-sex close friends’ desire for luxury gifts. Besides, “being loved” social comparison (e.g., my

friend seems to be more loved than I am) is a psychological mechanism that makes women

compare their relationship to others’. Experiment 1 shows that a close friend (vs. stranger) who get

a luxury (vs. non-luxury) gift from her romantic partner will trigger other women to make “being

loved” social comparison. Experiment 2 finds that women expose to their friends’ luxury (vs. non￾luxury) gifts will desire conspicuous (vs. inconspicuous) luxury gifts via “being loved” social

comparison mindset. Finally, a survey shows that women in a higher competitive social network

(frequency of exposing to friend with luxury gifts) also have a higher desire for luxury romantic

gifts. These results contribute to a better understanding of women’s desire for luxury romantic gifts.

It also illustrates that that evolutionary psychological approaches can be useful for understanding

consumer behavior.

Keywords: women’s desire, “being loved” comparison, luxury goods, evolutionary psychology

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I. INTRODUCTION

1. Research motivation

Humans are a sexually dimorphic species, meaning that each sex behaves

differently than does the other in many ways. For example, men and women act

differently in risk-taking (Byrnes, Miller, & Schafer, 1999), in aggression

(Bettencourt & Miller, 1996; Lagerspetz, Björkqvist, & Peltonen, 1988; Salmivalli

& Kaukiainen, 2004), in depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2001; Nolen-Hoeksema &

Girgus, 1994) or in displaying blatant benevolence behavior (Griskevicius et al.,

2007). Moreover, in marketing, marketers also use gender as an essential

segmentation because men and women are different from consuming products.

For example, men and women are different from responding to price, advertising,

social influence while shopping or purchasing and reacting with internet

advertising or in displaying loyalty to brand (Audrain-Pontevia & Vanhuele, 2016;

Garbarino & Strahilevitz, 2004; Kurt, Inman, & Argo, 2011; McMahan, Hovland,

& McMillan, 2013; Melnyk, Osselaer, & Bijmolt, 2009). Thus, it seems that men

and women are psychologically different.

Men and women are also different in gift-giving behavior. According to

Sherry and McGrath (1989), gift giving is “work of women." As compared to men,

women offered more gifts than they received (Caplow, 1982; Fischer & Arnold,

1990), they paid more on average (Rucker et al., 1991) and were more satisfied

with their gift selection (Fischer & Arnold, 1990). However, these findings have

confined to contexts other than romantic relationships (such as gift giving during

Christmas). In a romantic relationship, it has been found that it is men and not

women that play a more significant role in gift giving in the context of courtship

(Saad & Gill, 2003).

Gift giving could have evolved as a distinctly male courtship strategy (Saad &

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Gill, 2003). According to Trivers’ (1972) parental investment theory and Buss’s

(1989) mate preferences, men are less investing sex, men prefer sexual variety for

increasing reproductive success, whereas women are high investing sex, their

preference is generous men with resources. Therefore, men use gifts as a strategy

to advance their fitness outcomes because men believe that gifts can be exchanged

for sexual favors (Belk & Coon, 1993). Stating a differently, men are tactical for

offering gifts to a romantic partner and will stop offering gifts once a woman

confesses her love (Belk & Coon, 1993). In courtship context, men’s motivations

(functions) in offering gifts to female partners seem to be obvious, while women’s

motivations (functions) in receiving gifts from male partners remain unclear.

The purpose of this study was to investigate women’s motivation in receiving

gifts under dating context. For men, gift giving can serve as adaptive tactics in the

courtship context. For women, there is a reason to believe that women’s

motivations to get gifts from romantic partners (romantic gift) might serve as an

adaptive function which is beneficial for them and their offspring's survival

strategy. It is because by seeing the number of money men spend on a romantic

gift, women can make inferences on how much men desire (love) them and men

commit to her. The more a man is willing to invest his resources in a relationship,

the more commitment he makes, and thus the less he will leave the relationship

(Buss, 1988) (mate retention strategy). Moreover, receiving a romantic gift can

help a woman to boast how much her romantic partner commits to her. Thus,

obtaining a romantic gift might help to ward off potential rivals (intrasexual

competition) (discuss later). If these arguments are correct, women are not merely

passive in receiving gifts (e.g., men give gifts and women receive). They might be

active in receiving gifts (asking or requesting for gifts). By examining adaptive

functions of women’s receiving gifts from a romantic partner, we can understand

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the nature of women’s desire and its functions. As stated in Nguyen’s (2014)

thesis, men and women have a distinct desire in a romantic relationship “a man

desires a woman as the object of his desire, whereas a woman desires to be the

target object a man desires” (Nguyen, 2014, p. 2). Although Nguyen (2014) has

proposed gendered desire, she has not studied adaptive functions of women’s

desire. Hence, this study will further examine adaptive functions of women’s

desire.

Interestingly, there has been a growing interest in consumer desire. Because

"desire is the motivating force behind much of contemporary consumption" (Belk,

Ger, & Askegaard, 2003, p. 326). Although desire is a fundamental force in

explaining people consuming behavior, there is limited understanding of

consumer desire and its functions. Thus, this study aims to explore the function of

desire under evolutionary psychology perspective, which, in turn, helps to

understand consumer desire.

2. Purpose and method of study

This study aims to explain “why do women desire gifts from their romantic

partner?” under the perspective of evolutionary psychology. A woman desires to

identify whether or not she is a target object a man desires may function to help a

woman to ward off one’s same-sex rivals (intrasexual competition) and to avoid

being abandoned from male partners (mate retention) which, in turn, influences

women consumer decisions.

This study will use two experimental studies and one survey to test our

hypotheses. It predicted that under being loved social comparison mindset,

women are more likely to desire conspicuous luxury goods (not inconspicuous

luxury goods) when their same-sex friends get a romantic gift or when they are in

the high competitiveness of social network.

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II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1. Women’s desire for romantic gifts

A gift is defined as goods or services voluntarily provided to other person or

group through some ritual presentation (Belk, 1979). Gifts can include both the

tangible and intangible. It can also be material and nonmaterial gifts. Nonmaterial

gifts involve helping the other person when they are stressed for time, lending a

car, and so on (Belk & Coon, 1991). Gift giving is one of the processes that

integrate a society (Sherry, 1983). Regarding romantic gift giving, dating gifts,

different from general product consumption, are typically highly motivated (Faure

& Mick, 1993). They are mainly used as a token of love and are used to express

the feelings of love and commitment toward others (Belk & Coon, 1993;

Goodwin, Smith, & Spiggle, 1990; Schiffman & Cohn, 2009). Therefore, they are

nonessential and are not purchased based on needs.

Men and women are different in gift-giving behavior. Social structural theory

can explain the sex differences. The social structural theory emphasizes that

culture is the primary factor of gender differences with little effect of biology (size,

strength, lactation, and childbearing). According to this theory, men and women

occupy different social roles. Thus they tend to be different (Eagly, 1995). For

instance, women are assigned to a housekeeper role, they are responsible for

buying, choosing, and preparing for gifts, and thus they are a gift giver (Sherry &

McGrath, 1989). On the other hand, men are a gift receiver. Nonetheless, Saad

and Gill (2003) found that these roles of men and women are not correct in

romantic relationships. Thus, social structure theory has limited contributions in

explaining sex differences in gift-giving behavior.

In a romantic relationship, although Belk and Coon (1993) found that men, not

women, offer a gift to romantic partners as it helps men to celebrate the

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relationship or to establish, strengthen, maintain a social relationship, and by

giving a gift to a woman, a man shows his commitment to her. However, this

behavior will change depending on the stages of a romantic relationship. For

example, in the initial stage (flirting stage), men are supposed to be a gift giver. In

enlightenment (being a couple) stage, the expectation of giving and receiving of

men and women are quite similar. And in the commitment (engagement or

married) stage, men stop offering gifts once their date is “won” (i.e., the woman

confesses her love) (Belk & Coon, 1993). So gift-giving could have evolved as a

distinctly male courtship strategy for attracting and retaining mates (Buss &

Schmitt, 1993). It can be stated differently, for men, gifts are means to achieve

their ultimate goal.

What about women? Do women use gifts as a means to increase their

reproductive success? The answer is yes, but it is very different from men’s

strategy. In this study, we propose that women’s desire for a luxury gift from

romantic partners as a tactic to advance their fitness outcome. For instance, men

often give gifts to women during the courtship period. It might be beneficial for

him to increase ultimate goal (increase sexual variety and hence increase

reproductive success). On the other hand, a woman's desire for a romantic gift

because this gift is considered as a man's investment in a relationship (how much

she feels her romantic partner loves her). Thus, by seeing the amount of money

that men spend on a romantic gift, women can make inference about how much

men desire (love) them (desire to be a target of men desire). The more a man is

willing to invest his resources in a relationship, the more he desires a woman, and

the less a man persuades short-term strategy. Moreover, receiving a romantic gift

can help a woman to boast how much her romantic partner commits to a

relationship. This gift helps to ward off potential rivals (intrasexual competition).

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Recently, this questions “why does a woman keep asking for a gift from her

romantic partner? Is she a gold-digger?” are posted on social media, and this

receives a lot of people’s attention (both men and women). However, there has

been no study trying to investigate this. Thus, this study will try to explain this

phenomenon under evolutionary psychology.

2. Evolutionary psychology of women’s desire

Sex differences are stemmed from the theory of sexual selection initially

proposed by Darwin (1871) and then further developed by Trivers (1972).

According to Trivers’s theory (1972), men invest relatively less in offspring than

women do. They need to invest only replenishable cheap sperm (Buss, 2015), and

thus they are only constrained by a number of fertile women they can impregnate.

Women, in contrast, invest more resources in offspring. They are restricted by a

number of children they can produce (Geary, Vigil, & Byrd-Craven, 2004)

because a woman can produce limited numbers of a fertilized egg in their lifespan

(Trivers, 1972). Thus, they will produce roughly the same number of offspring in

a given breeding season, regardless of how many males they mate with. Moreover,

for each child women produce, they need to invest substantial resources such as

time, energy or effort.

The difference in the obligation investment makes men and women have

evolved different reproductive strategies. For men, they can increase reproductive

success by displaying tactics to inseminate as many female mates as possible. For

example, when men see an opportunity of sexual intimacy, they tend to be kind,

more generous, willing to pay for a date, etc. Men are willing to buy conspicuous

consumption to attract the opposite mate (Griskevicius, Tybur, Gangestad, Perea,

& Shapiro, 2009; Griskevicius et al., 2007; Miller, 2000; Zahavi & Zahavi, 1997).

In contrast, for women, they have more to lose when making poor mating choices.

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Therefore, they should select the man who has not only good genes but also is

able and willing to invest resources in offspring.

According to parental investment theory, it is well understood that a woman is

very cautious in selecting a man as a romantic partner. A woman will choose a

man who has resources and commits to invest in her and her offspring for long

period of nourishment. A man, concerning gendered reproductive strategies, has

evolved a strategy to inseminate as many female mates as possible, while a

woman might have advanced a strategy to keep being interested in, and sexually

attracted by a man. It is why what is the most concerned by a woman is how much

she loves her partner but how much her romantic partner loves (desires) her. A

man's desire is a sexual urge, and a woman desires to be target object of a man

desires. (Being loved by a romantic partner in this research is not only merely

feeling emotion but is an act of a man’s commitment, ability and willingness to

secure the survival of a woman’s offspring).

3. Intrasexual competition and women’s desire for romantic gifts

The Oxford English Dictionary defines "competition" as "the activity or

condition of striving to gain or win something by defeating or establishing

superiority over others." In making an argument for the existence of natural

selection, Darwin (1871) emphasized the importance of competition for limited

resources in “struggle for existence” throughout individual’s lifetimes. He argued

that resources are limited while more individuals are produced at a rapid rate.

Thus, individual needs to compete with each other for having resources, and

hence to survive. So competition is favored by natural selection (Darwin, 1871).

Over the course of recorded history, individuals have competed with one

another for status, wealth, territory, food, resources, and mating opportunities,

with victors typically gaining an advantage regarding survival and reproduction