Imitating Celebrities is a Consumer Luxury

Abstract

The issue of consumption is an important topic aimed at economic and social development and is one of the hard-to-ignore aspects of culture. Consumption patterns and people's attitudes shed light on society's awareness, values and behavioral and intellectual practices formed according to the foster environment of individuals. Consumer culture is influenced by social and economic changes of society. The study aims to recognize the impact of social media celebrities on young people's consumer behavior. The current study is one of the descriptive studies based on the social survey curriculum of a sample of study-specific university staff (male and female). The total sample size (384) is individual. The data were collected by questionnaire. The study reached several results. Males, divorcees, and university education holders of study sample individuals are more influenced by the personal characteristics of celebrities and their consumer behavior is influenced by celebrity advertisements. Variable marital status is the reason why there are statistically significant differences (at the level of 0.01) in both the effects of celebrities' personal characteristics on young people's consumer behavior and the trends of social media users towards celebrity advertising and social media advertisements. The impact of social media advertisements on young people's consumerist behavior and the influence of celebrities' personal characteristics on young people's consumerist behavior are both statistically different (at the 0.01 level), but trends among social media users toward celebrity ads are not affected by educational attainment. Due to the variable number of family members, there are statistically significant differences (at the level of 0.05) in the effects of celebrities' personal characteristics on young people's purchasing behavior, trends of social media users towards celebrity advertising, and the effects of social media advertisements on young people's purchasing behavior. It turns out that large families are more influenced by celebrities' personal characteristics and have positive trends towards celebrity advertising, and it turns out that high monthly income earners are influenced by celebrity advertising compared to low monthly income earners.

Received: 2 August 2024 / Accepted: 26 November 2024 / Published: 11 January 2025