Narcissism and Conspicuous Consumption of Adolescents in Russia

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Consumption and Advertising, grade: 96/100, , language: English, abstract: The general idea of this master thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of conspicuous consumption in Russia from a totally new perspective - the perspective of a young generation of consumers with a set of motivation. Thus, the aim of this research is to examine the interdependence between narcissism and conspicuous consumption in young generation of Russian consumers.

The purchasing of goods in order to demonstrate the wealth and power for the further purpose of the status maintenance is not a new tendency for Russia nowadays. Conspicuous consumption is frequently linked with the post-communist countries, consumers of those are the worldwide famous for their love to luxury goods. Thus, historically the term refers to the upper-class people, who purchase expensive brand products in a pursuit of prestige and honor.

However, with the time and many political, economic, and social media influences, the phenomenon itself has developed. Goods-demonstrators, main players and the initial purposes have been shifted significantly. As one of the main change, the self-related motives became one of the most important group of drivers of the purchasing decision, what is especially interesting to see among the non-mature consumer segment of the country, young generation.

Being grown in modern consumer societies and spoiled by wide variety of choices, ironically young people tend to consume goods to feed their self-love. Having purchased a novelty of the season, a modern youngster hurries to make "selfie" and post it in social network to get some approvals and/or admiration, measuring in "likes". Many scientists worldwide claim that such a habit may root in much deeper reason than just the age of technology, and even assign it to personal complexes. Deriving from the childhood, those complexes cause in the chronicle narcissism, which is dramatically increasing in people of modern society.