Gender Issues in Consumer Materialism: The Case of Mexico

Materialism has been identified as highly relevant for consumer behavior and therefore has been investigated extensively. This article extends previous research by investigating materialism in Mexico, a country relatively high in masculinity and substantially different from the United States and other Western markets. Specifically, the article takes interest in gender differences for materialistic values and thus contributes to research in role differences in masculine countries. Results show young, male, educated individuals to be significantly higher in materialism than their female counterparts. Further, the study reveals that although the overall concept of materialism may be applied to the Mexican context, perception patterns among Mexican participants of different aspects of materialism are very different from U.S. individuals.