Editing Conspicuous consumption (section)

==Distinctions of type==
The term ''conspicuous consumption'' denotes the act of buying something, especially something expensive, that is not necessary to one's life, in a noticeable way.<ref>''Longman American Dictionary'', 2000, p. 296.</ref> Scholar Andrew Trigg (2001) defined ''conspicuous consumption'' as behaviour by which one can display great wealth, by means of idleness—expending much time in the practice of leisure activities, and spending much money to consume [[luxury good]]s and services.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Trigg |first=A. |s2cid=55731706 |year=2001 |title=Veblen, Bourdieu, and conspicuous consumption |journal=Journal of Economic Issues |volume=35 |issue=1 |pages=99–115 |jstor=4227638 |doi=10.1080/00213624.2001.11506342 |url=https://oro.open.ac.uk/89777/1/17F.pdf }}</ref>

'''Conspicuous compassion''', the practice of publicly donating large sums of money to [[Charity (practice)|charity]] to enhance the [[Reputation|social prestige]] of the donor, is sometimes described as a type of conspicuous consumption.<ref name="West 2004" /> This behaviour has long been recognised and sometimes attacked—for example, the [[New Testament]] story ''[[Lesson of the widow's mite]]'' criticises wealthy people who make large donations ostentatiously, while praising poorer people who make small but comparatively more difficult donations in private.<ref>
{{cite book|author=Robert L. Payton and Michael P. Moody|title=Understanding Philanthropy: Its Meaning and Mission|year=2008|isbn=978-0253000132|page=137|publisher=Indiana University Press }}
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Possible motivations for conspicuous consumption include:
* [[Demonstration effect|Demonstration]]/[[Bandwagon effect#Microeconomics|bandwagon]] effect — In the book ''Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior'' (1949), [[James Duesenberry]] proposed that a person's conspicuous consumption psychologically depends not only upon the actual level of spending, but also upon the degree of his or her spending, as compared with the spending of other people. Thus the conspicuous consumer is motivated by the importance, to him or to her, of the opinion of the social and economic reference groups for whom are performed the patterns of conspicuous consumption.<ref name=":6">[[James Duesenberry|Duesenberry, James S]]. (1949), ''Income, Saving and the Theory of Consumer Behavior''. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.</ref><ref name=":7">{{Cite journal | doi=10.1108/10610420810856495 |title = Conspicuous consumption among middle age consumers: Psychological and brand antecedents|journal = Journal of Product & Brand Management|volume = 17|pages = 25–36|year = 2008|last1 = Shukla|first1 = Paurav}}</ref>
* Aggressive ostentation — In a 2006 ''[[Cbsnews.com|CBSNews.com]]'' article, [[Dick Meyer]] said that conspicuous consumption is a form of anger towards society, an "aggressive ostentation" that is an [[antisocial behaviour]], which arose from the [[social alienation]] suffered by men, women, and families who feel they have become [[anonymity|anonymous]] in and to their societies. This feeling of alienation is aggravated by the decay of the [[communitarian]] ethic essential to a person feeling him or herself part of the whole society.<ref name="Aggressive Ostentation">{{cite web|last1=Meyer, Dick|date=2009-02-11|title=Aggressive Ostentation|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aggressive-ostentation/|url-status=live|access-date=2021-05-10|work=CBS News|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161227200019/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/aggressive-ostentation/ |archive-date=2016-12-27 }}</ref>
* Shelter and transport — In the United States, the trend towards building houses that were larger than needed by a [[nuclear family]] began in the 1950s. Decades later, in the year 2000, that practice of conspicuous consumption resulted in people buying houses that were double the average size needed to comfortably house a nuclear family.<ref name="Monster Homes R Us">{{cite web|last=Lloyd |first=Carol |url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/10/14/carollloyd.DTL |title=Monster Homes R Us: American homes are monuments to conspicuous consumption|work=SF Chronicle |date=2005-10-14 |access-date=2011-10-20}}</ref> Negative consequences of either buying or building an oversized house might include:
**the loss of or reduction in the family's domestic recreational space—the backyard and the front yard;
**the spending of old-age retirement funds to pay for a too-big house;
**over-long [[commuting]] time, from house to job, and vice versa, because the required plot of land was unavailable near a city.

Oversized houses facilitated other forms of conspicuous consumption, such as an oversized garage for the family's oversized motor vehicles or buying more clothing to fill larger clothes closets. Conspicuous consumption becomes a self-generating cycle of spending money for the sake of social prestige. Analogous to the consumer trend for oversized houses is the trend towards buying oversized [[light truck]]s, specifically the off-road [[sport utility vehicle]] type (cf. [[station wagon]]/[[estate car]]), as a form of psychologically comforting conspicuous consumption, because such large vehicles usually are bought by city-dwellers, an urban nuclear family.<ref name="Monster Homes R Us" />

* [[Prestige (sociology)|Prestige]] – In a 1999 article, Jacqueline Eastman, Ronald Goldsmith, and Leisa Reinecke Flynn said that ''status consumption'' is based upon conspicuous consumption; however, the literature of contemporary [[marketing]] does not establish definitive meanings for the terms ''status consumption'' and ''conspicuous consumption''.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Eastman, Jacqueline K., Ronald Goldsmith, and Leisa Reinecke Flynn|year=1999|title=Status Consumption in Consumer Behaviour: Scale Development and Validation|journal=Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice|volume=7|issue=3|pages=41–51|doi=10.1080/10696679.1999.11501839}}</ref><ref name="Shukla2">{{Cite podcast|url=http://www.pauravshukla.com/status-luxury-consumption-among-british-and-indian-consumers| title = Status (luxury) consumption among British and Indian consumers| website =Paurav Shukla| publisher =International Marketing Review| host =Shukla, Paurav| date =2010-01-09| access-date =2011-10-20}}</ref> Moreover, A. O'Cass and H. Frost (2002) claim that sociologists often incorrectly used the two terms as interchangeable and equivalent terms. In a later study, O'Cass and Frost determined that, as sociological constructs, the terms ''status consumption'' and ''conspicuous consumption'' denote different sociological behaviours.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Cass |first1=A. |last2=Frost |first2=H. |year=2002 |title=Status Brands: Examining the Effects of Non-product-related Brand Associations on Status and Conspicuous Consumption |journal=Journal of Product & Brand Management |volume=11 |issue=2 |pages=67–88 |doi=10.1108/10610420210423455}}</ref> About the ambiguities of denotation and connotation of the term ''conspicuous consumption'', R. Mason (1984) reported that the classical, general theories of consumer decision-processes do not readily accommodate the construct of "conspicuous consumption", because the nature of said socio-economic behaviours varies according to the social class and the economic group studied.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Mason |first=R. |year=1984 |title=Conspicuous Consumption: A Literature Review |journal=European Journal of Marketing |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=26–39 |doi=10.1108/eum0000000004779}}</ref>
* Motivations – Paurav Shukla (2010) says that, whilst marketing and sales researchers recognise the importance of the buyer's social and psychological environment, the definition of the term ''status-directed consumption'' remains ambiguous, because the development of a comprehensive general theory requires that social scientists accept two fundamental assumptions, which usually do not concord. First, though the "rational" (economic) and the "irrational" (psychologic) elements of consumer decision-making often influence a person's decision to buy particular goods and services, marketing and sales researchers usually consider the rational element dominant in a person's decision to buy the particular goods and services. Second, the consumer perceives the [[utility]] of the product (the goods, the services) as a prime consideration in evaluating its usefulness, i.e. the ''reason'' to buy the product.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Shukla |first=P. |year=2010 |title=Status Consumption in Cross-national Context: Socio-psychological, Brand and Situational Antecedents |journal=International Marketing Review |volume=27 |issue=1 |pages=108–129 |doi=10.1108/02651331011020429 }}</ref> These assumptions, required for the development of a general theory of brand selection and brand purchase, are problematic, because the resultant theories tend either to misunderstand or to ignore the "irrational" element in the behaviour of the buyer-as-consumer; and because conspicuous consumption is a behaviour predominantly "psychological" in motivation and expression, Therefore, a comprehensive, general theory of conspicuous consumption would require a separate construct for the psychological (irrational) elements of the socio-economic phenomenon that is conspicuous consumption.