CCSC Seminar with Prof L. J. Shrum (HEC Paris)

Keeping Up with the Joneses? Not So Much for Consumers Who Move Around a Lot

Dan Xie, L. J. Shrum, Tina M. Lowrey 

Changing residences is common for many consumers, and frequent moving has been shown to have important psychological and behavioral effects. The current research investigates the impact of residential mobility on the extent to which consumers engage in keeping-up behaviors–consumption (typically status-related) that is motivated by the desire to avoid status loss within the material domain. Based on theory and research showing that residential mobility affects the structure and strategies of social networks such that more mobile networks are associated with weaker norm strength, across five studies, we test the proposition that residentially mobile (vs. stable) consumers will engage in less keeping-up behaviors because they socially compare less. Studies 1A and 1B use U.S. Census Bureau and Google Trends data to show that state-level residential mobility is negatively related to the size of the state-level jewelry industry (study 1A) and search interest in luxury brands and social comparison words (study 1B). Study 2 shows that measured residential mobility negatively correlates with prestige sensitivity, and studies 3 and 4 manipulate residential mobility to show that residential mobility (vs. stability) leads to less motivation and interest in keeping-up behaviors and social comparison tendencies.

About L. J. Shrum
L. J. Shrum is a Professor of Marketing at HEC Paris. He holds a Ph.D. in Communications and an M.S. in Advertising (University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign), and a B.B.A. in Finance (University of Houston). His research applies social cognition concepts to understand the determinants of consumer judgments. He has written extensively on how media information influences the construction of values, attitudes, and beliefs. His research has appeared in leading journals in marketing, psychology, and communication, including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Public Opinion Quarterly, and Human Communication Research. He serves on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Media Psychology. He has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Consumer Psychology, and Editor of Consumer Psychology Review. The served as President of the Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) in 2010 and was named a Fellow of SCP in 2024.