Factors Influencing Conspicuous Consumption of Australian Tourists

Running head: REPORT
Factors influencing conspicuous consumption of Australian domestic and international
tourists
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REPORT
Introduction
Conspicuous consumption is an economic concept, which refers to the purchase and
consumption of luxury goods on a lavish scale for displaying one’s wealth (Veblen 2017). As
stated by Podoshen and Andrzejewski (2012), conspicuous consumption represents a means
of displaying an individual’s social status through luxury goods and service, which are not
usually affordable to other members belonging to the class. This phenomenon is also known
as Veblen effect, named after famous American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen
(Patsiaouras and Fitchett 2012). This economic concept is an important aspect in the study of
consumer behavior and due to this, there exists a large international market for the luxury
products. In the Australian economy also, the conspicuous consumption is present and
contributes a major share of the revenue. Not only the domestic individuals. but many
international tourists are also seen spending quite a large amount of money in luxury
shopping. The Department of Consumer Affair has undertaken a project to get a better
understanding of the factors such as socio demographics, cultural values, shopping
motivation and experience that influence the future behavioural intention of conspicuous
consumption of Australian domestic and international travellers. Thus, a survey was meant to
be conducted on some domestic and international travellers to gain knowledge on the
research topic. This report highlights the details of the survey questionnaire, its structure and
formation steps to address this research topic.
Structure of survey questionnaire
Survey method is one of the most simple and easiest methods for data collection. It
has many benefits, such as, it is less time consuming, easier to reach out to a larger sample
size, incurs low cost, more convenient in gathering any size of data and many more (Mitchell
and Carson 2013). In the matter of studying consumer behavior, survey method is most

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REPORT
commonly used to collect data on consumer profiles, such as, demographic factors, tastes and
preferences, behavioural aspects, expectations and experiences. In the given study, the survey
questionnaire was designed address various aspects of conspicuous consumption and pattern
of consumer behavior, aimed towards the domestic and international tourists. The survey
questionnaire was made with a purpose to make the matter easier to the survey respondents
and thereby an introduction of the survey and its purpose was mentioned at the beginning of
the survey form (Green 2014).
It contained 20 mixed questions, that is, both open ended and close ended questions
were used to make the content easier to understand and respond. Open ended questions were
included to reduce the task of interviewing the tourists, as that would consume more time,
cost and effort of the researcher. Close ended questions were used to maintain uniformity of
the answers. These responses are not only easier to collect, but also easier to interpret by
applying quantitative methods (De Vaus and de Vaus 2013). However, as close ended
questions cannot collect data on the type of explanatory information, hence, both type of
questions were included in the survey.
The questionnaire was divided into two parts, demographic and non-demographic
factors. Demographic factors are the socio economic factors that represent the social,
economic, cultural characteristics of the individuals or population of a society through
statistical expression (Richa 2012). In this survey, the age group, gender, region of residence,
income level, employment status, purpose of visit to Australia, yearly purchase of luxury
goods and percentage of income spent on the luxury goods purchase were included under
demographic factors. The non-demographic factors addressed specific questions on luxury
goods purchase behavior, intentions, expectations and experience of the domestic and
international tourists, who are visiting Australia. Both of these types of factors were