A Comparative Study of the Differences in Family Communication among Young Urban Adult Consumers and the Development of their Materialistic Values: A Discriminant Analysis

Abstract

The study attempts to uncover the characteristics of materialism groups in Malaysia. It assesses the differences between materialism groups, i.e., low and high materialistic groups, using demographic and family communication dimensions. The data was collected through self-administered questionnaires. The sample consisted of 956 respondents. The majority of the respondents were Malays followed by Chinese and Indians. The proportion of female respondents was higher than the male respondents. Most of the respondents were single and in the age group of between 19-29 years old.  Independent sample t-tests were used to compare mean scores for the study variables between ‘high’ materialism and ‘low’ materialism groups and significant mean differences were found between ‘high’ and ‘low’ materialism groups in terms of socio-oriented family communication construct. Specifically, it was found that the ‘high’ materialism group has considerably greater ratings on the constructs.  Internal consistency reliability assessment using Cronbach coefficient alpha revealed that all the three dimensions had high reliability. A stepwise discriminant analysis performed on two family communication variables  found that one variable was significant in differentiating the two materialism groups. The variable was socio-oriented family communication. The implications, significance and limitations of the study are discussed.