A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Materialism Construct - Assessing the Richins and Dawson\u27s Materialism Scale in Denmark, France and Russia

Richins and Dawson\u27s materialism scale is a widely applied measurement instrument in marketing research. However, like many marketing scales, the materialism measure has not been adequately validated in cross-national settings. The purpose of this study is to test the measurement equivalence of the materialism scale among western and eastern European consumers-specifically, in Denmark, France and Russia. The results of the analysis show that, while a reduced version of the scale is reasonably well suited to the Danish sample, it does not display adequate fit with either the French or Russian data. The inability to establish measurement equivalence leads us to conclude that a new scale may be necessary to measure materialism in cross-cultural contexts. (C) 2002 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved