One of the primary needs in the field of advertising and consumer behavior is the measurement of “need for status.” Status-seeking is a driver that leads individuals to seek to possess and display the items and emblems that make them feel and appear that they belong in higher strata within their social group (Bellezza et al., 2013). Even though status motive has been proposed as a critical factor in luxury marketing and branding studies, there is no established scale and operational definition of what need for status represents. This study aims to bridge the gap by creating and testing a two-part scale for the need for status, designed particularly to apply to the context of consumer behavior.The problem with existing scales used to measure need for status is that they either lack content validity, or they fail to measure all facets of the construct. For instance, some refer to status consumption, which is a behavioral tendency, interchangeably with the need for status, which is an internal motive (Eastman & Eastman, 2015). Others treat need for status as a unidimensional construct (Dubois et al., 2012) that does not address whether the status motive has different dimensions. The current study introduces a new scale for need for status, a scale that can be used by advertising and marketing scholars as a tool to be utilized, as one develops persuasive status-appeal messages. In addition, the status motive has been suggested as a cause for conspicuous spending on luxury products, as well as prosocial spending. However, no explanation is given regarding when each outcome is more likely. To explore a scale for need for status, this study will follow the steps developed by researchers in marketing (Churchill, 1979), psychology (Clark & Watson, 1995), and communication studies (Carpenter, 2018) to construct a scale that is theoretically sound and methodologically valid. The study will also adhere to best practices in psychometric research, particularly factor analysis and construct validation, as prescribed in some foundational sources (Kline, 2014; Osborne et al., 2008). All of these steps will be thoroughly explained in the method section. The results of the study have revealed two primary findings. First, the need for status has two main components: exclusiveness and respectability. Second, I found that each component is a better predictor of two contrasting outcomes: exclusiveness predicts intention and frequency of luxury spending, and respectability predicts charitable intentions and frequency of giving. All the necessary steps of testing reliability and validity for new scales have been conducted. The contribution of this scale for future research on luxury consumption, as well as prosocial spending, will be further discussed in the conclusion section.
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