Appearance Investment as Mediator of Materialism and Purchase Intention
5. Discussion and Conclusions
Our results demonstrated that face consciousness affects materialism positively, and the results are similar to those of Wong and Ahuvia (1998). The finding implies that people who exhibit high face consciousness heavily emphasize publicly visible possessions. Thus, consumers whose face consciousness is high tend to use luxury products and name-brand goods as key visible possessions in order to enhance their social status. Furthermore, materialism was noted to be positively related to appearance investment, and thus our results agree with those of Kasser and Ryan (1996). Materialistic values are evident when people aspire to appear physically appealing. People who are highly materialistic are highly concerned with, and constantly attentive toward, their appearance; in this regard, our results are similar to those reported by Hirschman (1990), Netemeyer, Burton and Lichtenstein (1995), Durvasula, Lysonski and Watson (2001). Highly materialistic people attempt to present themselves at their highest possible level of attractiveness because they seek peer recognition, and
after gaining this recognition, they invariably strive to further increase their attractiveness. Eventually, these highly materialistic people commonly become overly absorbed with their appearance, and thus frequently seek information, products, and services for enhancing their appearance; ultimately, these people invest a considerable amount of time and energy on their appearance, and these activities become a central part of their daily life.
Our results indicate that face consciousness positively affects appearance investment. In the case of people who exhibit high face consciousness, self-esteem requirements commonly dictate personal decisions (Kunda, 1990);
these people are concerned with not only how others evaluate them but they also care about whether others consider their appearance to be appealing. This finding explains why such people are extremely worried about how others view them.
People who exhibit high face consciousness might choose to invest in appearance in order to enhance self-esteem or diminish psychological anxiety. The results of our analysis also indicate that appearance investment positively affects the intention to purchase cosmetic surgery. Women whose appearance investment is high tend to spend a considerable amount of time either attending to or attempting to maintain or enhance their appearance (Cash, Melnyk, and Hrabosky, 2004).
Forand et al. (2010) noted that the perceptions of women who invest heavily on their appearance are likely to be influenced by appearance-related practices, including cosmetic surgery.
Our analysis results further indicated that materialism accurately predicts the intention to purchase cosmetic surgery: Women whose materialistic aspirations are high exhibit a high intention to pay for cosmetic surgery. Our findings correspond to Kasser’s work on materialism (Kasser and Ryan, 1996).
People who are motivated by materialistic aspirations rather than intrinsic concerns are highly likely to readily focus on appearance and care about their appearance. This explains why such people invest in appearance in order to achieve their goal, which is to appear appealing to others. Our results suggest that people are likely to be highly willing to purchase cosmetic surgery as an effective means of increasing their attractiveness.
As expected based on previous findings, our results showed that face consciousness was positively related to the intention to purchase cosmetic surgery;
this agrees with the results of Wong and Ahuvia (1998), who stated that high face consciousness makes Southeast Asians more likely than Westerners to purchase products as a symbolic social gesture rather than as an expression of their inner selves. Consumers who exhibit high face consciousness must endure the burden of high social requirements (Bao, Zhou, and Su, 2003), and this makes them pay substantial amounts of money for a product that can present their image, status, or feelings toward fellow group members (Belk, 1988).
Our results indicate that aging anxiety moderates the relationship between appearance investment and intention to purchase cosmetic surgery. People who exhibit high aging anxiety worry about growing older and losing their youth, and about their drooping eyelids and their wrinkled skin; this explains why these people might display a highly positive attitude toward enhancing and maintaining their appearance and why they are attracted to the “antiaging” properties of cosmetic surgery. This study also confirmed the mediating roles of materialism and appearance investment; our results showed that consumers’ materialism mediates the relationship between face consciousness and appearance investment, and appearance investment mediates the relationship between materialism and intention to purchase cosmetic surgery. These findings suggest that face consciousness directly influences consumers’ intention to purchase cosmetic surgery, and indirectly influences this purchase intention through materialism and appearance investment. On the basis of these findings, we present the following suggestions. Researchers can conduct attitude and value tests in order to identify the priorities of consumers in this value system. The test results might serve as an effective market-segmentation tool. Organizations could provide services or products that fulfill a social requirement and thus facilitate interaction among consumers. Organizations that emphasize the importance of attractiveness commonly highlight the social and material gains garnered as a result of enhancing attractiveness; considerable evidence suggests that attractive people accrue financial and social benefits (Langlois et al., 2000). Furthermore, as an advertising strategy, cosmetic surgery could be depicted as an effective method of
enhancing a person’s attractiveness in the eyes of others and improving the person’s social and career prospects. Lastly, to help service providers, various strategies could be implemented based on the differences between consumers’
materialistic characteristics and the level of appearance investment in order to effectively guide product positioning. For example, middle-aged women and women who exhibit aging anxiety could be targeted by means of advertisements that successfully attract these women: advertisements emphasizing that physical beauty is enchanting and can bring happiness.
Women are held to higher standards of attractiveness throughout their lives than men are, and thus women are more negatively affected than men are by ageism and the aging process. This predicament influences diverse aspects of women’s lives, including their concept of self and their mental health.
Furthermore, women are more concerned about aging than men are, particularly during the period in which their physical appearance declines. In terms of public policy, we recommend that governments must help middle-aged women who worry about aging by supporting women who strive to refute negative cultural stereotypes and also by inviting middle-aged women to actively participate in efforts to enhance their personal growth and development (Degges- White, 2001).
Here, we stress that people have the right to make their own decisions regarding their bodies, but they must also note that elective surgical procedures pose risks. In the case of cosmetic surgery, a person who undergoes surgery must face short-term and long-term physical and psychological health risks associated with negative surgical outcomes. The limitations of this study are the following.
The research sample comprised middle-aged women, and thus the conclusions might not be readily transferrable nationwide; this reduces the external validity of this study. Moreover, cross-sectional self-reported observations were used in this study, and thus it was not possible to consider the previous experiences of the participants that might have potentially biased their responses.
In this survey, all of the data were obtained from the same source, and thus the study might have suffered from common method variance (CMV);
consequently, several procedural and statistical remedies were applied to
minimize and estimate the impact of CMV, as recommended in previous studies (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Specifically, to ensure complete anonymity, we did not collect any personal information from the participants; this allowed us to reduce the possibility of the participants providing socially desirable responses and exhibiting evaluation apprehension. Scales featuring distinct response formats were used (Likert for face consciousness; materialism; appearance investment;
aging anxiety; purchase intention), which reduced method bias due to commonalities in scale endpoints and anchoring effects (Podsakoff et al., 2003).
Furthermore, we used the single-common method-factor approach to estimate method biases at the measurement level and to control measurement error (Podsakoff et al., 2003): We assessed CMV by comparing fit indices between the basic measurement model and the model in which all items were loaded on a latent CMV factor. This method allows the response variance to a specific measure to be partitioned into three components: trait, method, and random error.
Chi-square difference test showed that the model with the CMV factor had a poor fit (χ2 = 2392.85, df = 65, χ2
/df =36.83, RMSEA = 0.25, CFI = 0.54, GFI = 0.58)
and a significantly higher χ2 value than the basic measurement model (Δχ
2 = 2096.76, Δdf = 2, p < 0.001). Therefore, the four constructs explained most of the variance in data, and CMV does not appear to have been a major problem in this study.Future study should explore whether aging anxiety moderates the relationship between face consciousness and purchase intention of micro-cosmetic surgery; whether aging anxiety moderates the relationship between face consciousness and appearance investment; or whether aging anxiety moderates the relationship between materialism and purchase intention of micro-cosmetic surgery. Future studies could also ascertain whether advertisements induce middle-aged women to purchase micro-cosmetic surgery. Moreover, ethnic groups more diverse than the one studied here must be selected to examine what factors influence their intention to purchase cosmetic surgery, and studies must also explore how appearance investment affects the interpersonal functioning of men.
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