Distance and Alternative Signals of Status: A Unifying Framework

In the past decades, as traditional luxury goods and conspicuous consumption have become more mainstream and lost some of their signaling value, new alternative signals of status (e.g., vintage, inconspicuous consumption, sustainable luxury) have progressively emerged. This research applies the grounded theory method to establish a novel framework that systematically unifies existing conceptualizations, findings, and observations on alternative signals of status. The proposed framework organizes alternative signals in terms of their distance from traditional status symbols and categorizes them along six focal dimensions: time (new/old), quantity (many possessions/few possessions), conspicuousness (conspicuous/inconspicuous), aesthetics (beautiful/ugly), culture (highbrow/lowbrow), and pace of life (slow/fast). This parsimonious framework captures various consumption phenomena related to status signaling, unifies existing theories, and generates a fruitful agenda for future research.