Sacrifice for (not) buying: how to measure sacrifice in the consumer context

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.33448/rsd-v10i13.21556

Keywords:

Sacrifice for (not) Buying; Scale Development; Valence; Instrumentality.

Abstract

This paper describes what the sacrifice is for consumption and proposes a scale to measure the sacrifice for (not) buying products. A multimethod approach was applied to achieve the proposed objectives. Initially, three qualitative studies were carried out (two focus groups and one interview with experts). Then, three quantitative studies were conducted (two online and a survey), and finally, two factorial experiments, 2x2 were developed. The act of sacrifice was understood as an exchange process in which some kind of benefit is sought, a fact that also consolidates the definition of sacrifice presented as the willingness to give up something that has value (monetary or not) in order to obtain some benefit (emotional and/or material) of greater importance. Furthermore, the existence of positive and negative elements in the sacrifice for (not) buying products, described as valence and instrumentality, respectively, was identified. It was also found that different levels of valence and instrumentality affect purchase intent. The elements that comprise the sacrifice for (not) buying products were presented, highlighting a definition that can reduce the doubts about what sacrifice is in the context of consumption, as well as how to measure it.

References

Bardin, L. (2011). Análise de Conteúdo. Lisboa: Edições 70.

Bataille, G. (1988). The Accursed Share: an essay on general economy. New York: Zone Books.

Beldona, S., & Kher, H. V. (2014). The Impact of Customer Sacrifice and Attachment Styles on Perceived Hospitality. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 56(4), 355-368. https://doi.org/doi:10.1177/1938965514559048.

Belk, R. (2010). Sharing. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(5), 715–734. https://doi.org/10.1086/612649.

Bubbio, D. G. (2013). Kant’s sacrificial turns. Int J Philos Relig, 73(2), 97-115. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-012-9380-3.

Carter, J. (2003). Understanding Religious Sacrifice: a Reader. London/New York: Continuum.

Churchill, G. A. J. (1979). A paradigm for developing better measures of marketing constructs. Journal of Marketing Research, 16(1), 64–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224377901600110.

Clarke, J. (2007). The Four ‘S’s’ of experience gift giving behaviour. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 26(1), 98–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2005.10.001.

Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Costa, F. J. (2011). Mensuração e desenvolvimento de escalas: aplicações em administração. Rio de Janeiro: Ciência Moderna.

Cronin, J. J., Jr., Brady, M. K., & Hult, T. M. (2000). Assessing the effects of quality, value, and customer satisfaction on consumer behavioral intentions in service environments. Journal of Retailing, 76(2), 193-218. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0022-4359(00)00028-2.

Day, L. C., & Impett, E. A. (2017). Giving when it costs: How interdependent self-construal shapes willingness to sacrifice and satisfaction with sacrifice in romantic relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407517694965.

Desmonde, W. H. (1962). Magic, Myth, and Money: The Origin of Money in Religius Ritual. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Dodds, W. B., Monroe, K. B., & Grewal, D. (1991). Effects of price, brand, and store information on buyers' product evaluations. Journal of marketing research, 28(3), 307-319. https://doi.org/10.2307/3172866.

Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1956). Nuer religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Frazer, J. G. (1894). The Golden Bough - A Study in Comparative Religion. New York: MacMillan and Co.

Gao, H., Zhang, Y., & Mittal, V. (2015). Consumers’ Local-Global Identity and Price Sensitivity: The Role of Sacrifice Mindset. In: AP - Asia-Pacific Advances in Consumer Research, 11 (eds. Echo Wen Wan and Meng Zhang), Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, 302-303.

Girard, R. (2005). Violence and the Sacred. London: Continuum.

Halbertal, M. (2012). On Sacrifice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Hubert, H., & Mauss, M. (1989). Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Hüttel, A., Ziesemer, F.; Peyer, M., & Balderjahn, I. (2018). To purchase or not? Why consumers make economically (non-)sustainable consumption choices. Journal of Cleaner Production, 174(10), 827-836. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.11.019.

James, E. O. (1933). Origins of Sacrifice: A Study in Comparative Religions. London: John Murray.

Kearns, C.M. (2016), Theory and description in recent work on sacrifice. J R Anthropol Inst, 22: 412-414. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12407

Keenan, D. K. (2005). The Question of Sacrifice. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Koch, E., & Sauerbronn, J. (2018). To love beer above all things: An analysis of Brazilian craft beer subculture of consumption. Journal of Food Products Marketing, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/10454446.2018.1431577.

Komiya, A., Ohtsubo, Y., Nakanishi, D., & Oishi, S. (2019). Gift-giving in romantic couples serves as a commitment signal: Relational mobility is associated with more frequent gift-giving. Evolution and Human Behavior, 40(2), 160-166. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2018.10.003.

Matear, M. A. (2014). The Role and Nature of Willingness to Sacrifice in Marketing Relationships. Kingston: Queen’s University.

Mauss, M. (2002). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge Classics.

Minowa, Y., & Belk, R. W. (2019). Gifts, romance, and consumer culture. Albany, NY: Routledge.

Mill, J. S. (1848). Principles of political economy. London, England: John W. Parker.

Miller, D. (1998). A Theory of Shopping. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Monroe, K. B., & Krishnan, R. (1985). The effect of price on subjective product evaluations. In: Jacoby, J. and Olson, J. C. (Eds.), Perceived quality: how consumers view stores and merchandise. Lexington Books, Lexington, 209–232.

Moufahim, M. (2013). Religious gift giving. Marketing Theory, 13(4), 421–441. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470593113499698.

Netemeyer, R. G., Bearden, W. O., & Sharma, S. (2003). Scaling Procedures: Issues and Applications. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (2000). Satisfaction, sacrifice, surprise: three small steps create one giant leap into the experience economy. Strategy & Leadership, 28(1), 18–23. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570010335958.

Rahman, I., & Reynolds, D. (2016). Predicting green hotel behavioral intentions using a theory of environmental commitment and sacrifice for the environment. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 52, 107–116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.09.007.

Ramp, W. (2008). Transcendence, Liminality and Excess: Durkheim and Bataille on the Margins of ‘Sociologie Religieuse’. Journal of Classical Sociology, 8(2), 208-232. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795x08088872.

Ringle, C. M., Wende, S., & Becker, J.-M. (2015). SmartPLS 3, 2015. Available in: http://www.smartpls.com.

Schmidt, B. E. (2013). Blood Sacrifice as a Symbol of the Paradigmatic Other - The Debate about Ebó-Rituals in the Americas. In: Sacrifice and Modern Thought. New York: Oxford University Press, 197–213.

Sherry JR., J. F. (1983). Gift Giving in Anthropological Perspective. Journal of Consumer Research, 10(2), 157.

Sherry, J. F., & Kozinets, R. V. (2007). Sacred iconography in secular space: alters, alters, and alterity at the Burning Man Project. In: Otnes, C. and Lowrey, T. M. Contemporary consumption rituals. New Jersey: Taylor & Francis, 291-313.

Shilling, C, & Mellor, P. A. (2013). Making things sacred: re-theorizing the nature and function of sacrifice in modernity. Journal of Classical Sociology, 13(3), 319-337. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X13480643.

Simmel, G. (1990). The Philosophy of Money. London: Routledge.

Smith, W. R. (1894). Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. London: Adam and Charles Black.

Teas, R. K., & Agarwal, S. (2000). The effects of extrinsic product cues on consumers’ perceptions of quality, sacrifice, and value. Journal of the Academy of marketing Science, 28(2), 278-290. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070300282008.

Tylor, E. B.(1871a). Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. (Vol. 2). London: John Murray.

Tylor, E. B. (1871b). Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. (Vol. 1). London: John Murray.

Van Lange, P. A. M., Rusbult, C. E., Drigotas, S. M., Arriaga, X. B., Witcher, B. S., & Cox, C. L. (1997). Willingness to sacrifice in close relationships. Journal of personality and social psychology, 72(6), 1373–1395. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.6.1373.

Watts, J. W. (2011). The Rhetoric of Sacrifice. In: Christian A. E., Ritual and Metaphor: Sacrifice in the Bible. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 3-16.

Wilcox, R. R. (2017). Global comparisons of medians and other quantiles in a one-way design when there are tied values. Communications in Statistics: Simulation and Computation, 46(4), 3010–3019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03610918.2015.1071388.

Williams, J., Ashill, N., &Thirkell, P. (2016). How is value perceived by children? Journal of Business Research, 69(12), 5875-5885. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2016.04.103.

Zaichkowsky, J. L. (1985). Measuring the Involvement Construct. Journal of Consumer Research, 12(3), 341. https://doi.org/10.1086/208520.

Zaichkowsky, J. L. (1994). The Personal Involvement Inventory: Reduction, Revision, and Application to Advertising. Journal of advertising, 23(4), 59–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00913367.1943.10673459.

Zeithaml, V. A. (1988). Consumer perceptions of price, quality, and value: a means-end model and synthesis of evidence. Journal of Marketing, 52(3), 2–22.

Downloads

Published

19/10/2021

How to Cite

GOMES, J. de P. .; FARIAS, S. A. de; SILVA, M. J. de B. Sacrifice for (not) buying: how to measure sacrifice in the consumer context. Research, Society and Development, [S. l.], v. 10, n. 13, p. e478101321556, 2021. DOI: 10.33448/rsd-v10i13.21556. Disponível em: https://rsdjournal.org/index.php/rsd/article/view/21556. Acesso em: 19 apr. 2024.

Issue

Section

Human and Social Sciences