Status-Seeking Aggression

In preparation for submission to Journal of Marketing

Status motives are present across many consumer behavior domains. However, they have remained relatively underexplored in the consumer aggression literature. We find that consumers higher in status-seeking tendencies are more willing to engage in consumer aggression towards firms. We further find that consumers believe these motives to be of roughly equal importance to more standard motives for consumer aggression, but that admitting one holds status motives is subject to social desirability bias. These findings have important implications for firms that find themselves the target of consumer outrage in contexts where status motives are salient.