Chilean Teenagers: Consumption, Material Values and Life Satisfaction

Abstract

Globalization and the neoliberal economic model in Chile have made consumption a cornerstone of individual and collective identity construction processes, attaching importance to materialism and impulse buying, which has particularly affected generations that have grown up inside this model. This study explores the relationship between styles of consumption, material values, and life satisfaction in high school students from different socioeconomic levels in southern Chile through two-stage sampling (423 first and second-year students). The findings show a direct, positive relationship between materialism, impulse buying and compulsive buying; a low inverse relationship between life satisfaction and compulsive buying and material values; and a linear relationship between impulse buying and socioeconomic level. No relationship was found between socioeconomic level and life satisfaction and materialism.

Keywords

• purchase styles
• life satisfaction
• material values
• socioeconomic level
• adolescence.