Hedonic Advertising and Consumers’ Subjective Well-Being: An Upward Comparison among Gen Z
Abstract
The role of advertising with respect to different types of social comparison is a neglected area in a collectivist culture like Pakistan. The study aims to examine the effects of hedonic advertising on consumer’s subjective well-being. The study will also examine the mediating role of materialism, and episodic envy. A true experimental design testing two conditions i.e., hedonic advertising vs control was adopted to gather responses from 200 Gen Z consumers. Single-stage cluster sampling technique has been used to collect data. Data was further analyzed through SPSS and AMOS, where descriptive analysis and MANOVA testing was run through SPSS v.25 and regression and path analysis was run through AMOS v.21. The findings highlighted that after viewing hedonic advertising, consumers were more materialistic, score high on episodic envy, and are dissatisfied with their lives. Furthermore, episodic envy and materialism partially mediates the relationship between hedonic advertising exposure and subjective well-being. The study is first of its kind that has empirically tested the advertising effects on consumer’s subjective well-being through social comparison in a collectivist country like Pakistan. In particular, it examined hedonic advertising and study its impact on materialism as well as subjective well-being. The study provides guidelines for advertising agencies for improving the quality of advertising content so that the negative impacts of advertising can be minimized. It also provides guidelines for the controlling authorities at the governmental level to better examine and scrutinize the content with respect to the subjective well-being of the viewer. The study suffers the limitations associated with posttest only control group methodology. Further the results are limited to hedonic advertising and has not examined other appeals.
Keywords: Subjective well-being (Life satisfaction), Materialism, Episodic Envy, Upward Social comparison, Hedonic advertising
