Self-esteem, life-satisfaction and materialism: Effects of advertising images on Chinese college students

This paper investigated the effects of exposure to advertising images on quality of life issues. Affordable products and unaffordable products, as well as control images, were presented to participants of the experiment. Subjects' self-esteem, life-satisfaction and materialism were measured using a battery of scales. Results indicated affordable product images did not affect any dependent variables. However, exposure to unaffordable products enhanced, rather than decreased, Chinese students' self-esteem and life-satisfaction, contrary to results found in previous social comparison research. This suggested that Chinese students were rather optimistic about their future and they used future orientation in their prediction of success. Implications of the study were discussed.