Poverty consumption: Consumption behavior patterns of poor consumers

The causes of poverty, poverty alleviation or getting out of poverty, in short, "a minimally decent living" have long been issues of concern to many social disciplines. Consumption plays an important role in everyday life in industrialized countries. In the consumer society, normality is equated with the ability to consume. Consumers are expected to respond to the lure of the market by buying the latest and greatest consumer goods. While the wealthy members of the society fulfill this expectation, the poor consumers, who have limited ability to respond to the appeal of the consumption market, are separated from the society and seen as "undesirable", "non-consumable" and "defective consumers". The view or identification of low-income consumers causes marketers to ignore these consumers. And since these consumers do not have high priority as target markets, they stay in the background in market research. However, in the age of developing information technologies and rapid globalization, poor consumers who are exposed to the messages of consumption culture want to be a part of the "modern" lifestyle and need to follow the rules to ensure social acceptability. Poor consumers, who cannot isolate themselves from these messages, are trying to keep up with this situation, even though they have financial restrictions. And they do this through consumption. There are a number of beliefs that poor consumers are risky, unprofitable. These widely held beliefs about poor consumers need to be broken. This study aims to break these beliefs and draw a broader framework for the consumption behavior patterns of the poor. Qualitative research was conducted to determine the consumption behavior patterns of poor consumers; in-depth interviews were conducted with 30 poor consumers. Descriptive analysis and content analysis were used in the analysis of the data. Qualitative research findings showed that social comparison and materialism variables are important in terms of poor consumers' purchasing behavior. Based on these findings, a quantitative research was conducted in order to examine the effect of social comparison and materialism on purchasing behavior of known branded shopping goods. The theory of planned behavior is based on the quantitative research. In this direction, a questionnaire was applied to 430 consumers by face-to-face method. Exploratory factor analysis, multiple regression analysis and simple linear regression analysis were used in the analysis of the collected data. According to the qualitative research results, poor consumers were examined in nine categories (purchasing habits, shopping place preferences, strategies to cope with poverty, shopping motivations, price consciousness, quality consciousness, brand consciousness, brand loyalty, having to pay relatively more). According to the quantitative research findings, it was concluded that social comparison and materialism have a significant and positive effect on the attitude towards purchasing known branded shopping goods. Subjective norm, attitude and perceived behavior control variables were found to affect intention positively. Finally, it was concluded that intention has a positive and significant effect on behavior. In the conclusion part, suggestions for businesses and future studies are discussed in line with the qualitative and quantitative research findings. Keywords: Poverty, consumption, social comparison, materialism, theory of planned behavior