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ABSTRACT
The mere ownership effect (Beggan, 1992) is defined as the tendency of an owner to evaluate an object more favorably than a nonowner. The present research extends this idea to how people evaluate their property in comparison to others' property. The general hypothesis was that people would display an interpersonally based mere ownership effect and evaluate their possessions more favorably than others' possessions. Study 1 provided an initial confirmation of this hypothesis by showing that people associated more good traits with their possessions than the possessions of others. Studies 2, 3, and 5 ruled out alternative explanations for the ownership effects. Study 4 found that the attributes owners used to describe a possession were more positive than the attributes used by nonowners. Implications of the results for marketing and marketing research are considered. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
In recent years, the self has been recognized as an important concept for marketing researchers (Belk, 1988, 1991; Dittmar, 1992). One reason is that researchers have begun to realize the complex relationship between people and their possessions. For example, the self influences consumers' sensitivity to product advertisements and information (e.g., Burnkrant & Unnava, 1995; Debevec & Iyer, 1988; Hong & Zinkhan, 1995; Reardon & Moore, 1996). The self also affects motivation for ownership in that people use possessions to express themselves (Fournier & Richins, 1991; Hirschman & LaBarbera, 1990). Richins (1994a; 1994b) suggested that people communicate both the public and private meanings of possessions. For example, brand preferences reflect a consistency between product image and self-image that may be moderated by individual differences (Graeff, 1996).
A stronger statement of the relationship between the self and possessions was proposed by Belk (1988, 1991), who suggested that possessions can be considered part of the extended self. Beggan (1992) provided indirect evidence of the extended self, with the self-serving bias literature used as a conceptual framework. Beggan suggested that because people tend to view the self in an overly favorable manner (Taylor & Brown, 1994), if they think of their possessions as part of the self, then they might view their possessions in an overly favorable manner. Beggan (1992) demonstrated that people evaluated a target object more favorably when they owned it, relative to a condition...