Decorative consumption and socio-demographic antecedents: revelations from a study on wristwatches and houses among Colombo office workers

Modern day man engages in vicarious consumption patterns in order to showcase wealth, enhance prestige and embrace others’ attention through Conspicuousness, Exclusiveness and Emulation. Yet, too little attention has been devoted to this obtrusive consumer desire in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the world. In light of this, the purpose of this study was to provide a basis to what the authors denote as ‘Decorative Consumption’ and to examine the impact of socio-demographic determinants in terms of Conspicuousness, Snobbism and Conformism. This paper reports the outcomes of an exploratory survey conducted on 250 employees working within Colombo city limits, under different socio-demographic segments: age, gender, sector, religion and monthly income, employing the cases of wristwatches and houses. Results highlighted that ‘sector’ has a strong impact on the decorative consumption of wristwatches, as it is prone towards decorativeness in all three dimensions; conspicuousness, snobbism and conformism. ‘Age’ and ‘religion’ could influence through conspicuousness and snobbism whereas ‘monthly income’ could influence through conspicuousness and conformism. In the case of houses, ‘religion’ appeared prone towards decorativeness in all three dimensions, while ‘age’ and ‘monthly income’ are prone to decorative consumption through conspicuousness and snobbism, and ‘sector’ is prone only through snobbism.