Extended digital self via social networks : an exploratory research

«I shop, therefore I am » used to say Barbara Krueger with an ironic twist of Descartes famous saying. Since the seminal work of Belk in 1988 about the self extension through consumption, there is a steady growing interest in the links between consumption and identity. This communication, aims to adapt a scale for measuring the concept of self extension suugested by Belk, and to test the factors that affects the attachment to some digital possessions (ie : social networks). The litterature identifies many antecedents through wich the extension of the self may happen. A scale based on Sivadas work is adapted and enriched, and an exploratory factorial analysis is conducted to test it’s relability and validity after the enrichment using SEM with SPSS AMOS. Then, we tested the concept of extended self as a potential mediator for attachment to the social network accounts and to predict the most salient dimensions that explain the strenght of the link with a a digital possession (ie : prefered social network)