Symbolic consumption: the effects of products? symbolic attributes on consumers? purchasing behaviuor

With the influence of postmodern culture, today, the fact of consumption has started to focus on fulfilling the sociologic and psychologic needs; beyond physiologic needs. Consumers' brand preferences initiated to have a tendency to be formed by symbolic features as well as functional features. Hence, the effect of products/brands? symbolic features on the consumers? brand preferences is extremely important to investigate in terms of marketing.The aim of this study is to determine the role of symbolic product attributes in consumers? brand preferences. To this end, a model, which tries to demonstrate the effect of products/brands? functional and symbolic features on consumers? brand preferences, is developed. In order to test the proposed model, a field study was conducted. For the purpose of collecting the primary data for the study, a survey was carried out on people who were sampled with convenience sampling method in Istanbul, Kocaeli and Sakarya. A total of 800 questionnaires were returned and 732 of those were usable for the purpose of analysis.The findings of the study tend to give support to the hypotheses developed in the study. In other words; findings indicate that, in addition to the funcional features of a brand, symbolic features have also inflence on brand preferences. Hence, the existence of consumers who evaluate and choose products/brands according to their symbolic features makes it compulsory for the marketing managers to understand the importance of symbolic features and highlight these features in order to make their brands differentiate from the others.Key Words: Symbolic Consumption, Brand, Symbolic Attributes, Brand Preference.