Introduction Existing studies have revealed various value systems’ relationship to consumer behavior. The factors that have been shown to explain consumer behavior include basic values (e.g., Rindfleisch, Burroughs, & Wong, 2009), consumer worldview (e.g., Saatcioglu & Ozanne, 2013), the dominant ideology of society (e.g., Juhl, Fenger, & Thøgersen, 2017), and political ideology (e.g., Jung, Garbarino, Briley, & Wynhausen, 2017). In this study, we attempted to identify a new, overarching construct that captures individuals’ socioeconomic worldview and then to investigate its impact on consumer behavior. In doing so, we developed a neoliberalism scale and investigated how it relates to consumption-related factors. This neoliberalism construct encompasses individuals’ perspectives on various dimensions, including profit centrism, government intervention, welfare, and self-development. Theoretical development Neoliberalism, as used in this construct, is defined as one’s tendency to support economic liberalizations (e.g., free trade, open markets, financial liberalization, deregulation, globalism, privatization, and private-sector enhancement) and the government’s powerful ruling and legal enforcement to reinforce them even at the expense of significant demographic processes. However, neoliberal individuals otherwise tend to consider the government and political system to be much less efficient and much more oppressive than the competitive market and private sector are. Additionally, they strive to manage everyday life strategically, as if they were innovative entrepreneurs. These individuals believe that one’s success largely depends on his or her own merits and efforts, and thus that inequality or unequal compensation is inevitable in order to achieve efficiency, economic growth, and moral justice (e.g., Peck & Tickell, 2007; Steger & Roy, 2010). Methods We distributed our survey to 374 adults (187 female) who are recruited through a market research firm’s online panel in Korea. Participants’ education levels were as follows: those who have only graduated from high school or have yet to graduate from high school = 20.9%, those who are current college students or have graduated from college = 66%, post-college graduates = 13.1%. Based on the literature on neoliberalism, we generated 54 items to measure neoliberalism tendencies. We initially created 12 dimensions, each of which included between four and six items. The dimensions included belief in economic growth, opposition to government intervention, belief in the inefficiency of the government, opposition to labor unions, opposition to policies that favor the majority, hostility toward social welfare, belief in the need to protect private property, support for globalization, interest in time management, elitism, interest in self-development, and interest in wealth management. We adapted our measures from existing scales, except for perceived social mobility and perceived social inequality, which were measures that we created. We measured long-term orientation (Bearden, Money, & Nevins, 2006), the perceived importance of achievement (Burroughs & Rindfleish, 2002), community values (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002), political cynicism (Kaid, 2002), political liberalism (Mehrabian, 1996), life values (Schwartz, 1992), materialism (Richins, 2004), consumer values (Sánchez-Fernández, Angeles Iniesta-Bonillo, & Holbrook, 2009) and impulsive buying behavior (Rook & Fisher, 1995). Results Using the data from 374 respondents, we conducted an exploratory-factor analysis to examine the factor structure of our neoliberalism scale. The exploratory-factor analysis used a principle-component method with direct oblimin rotation, and the criterion of eigenvalue greater than 1.00 generated an 11-factor solution. This factor solution accounted for 59.83% of the total variance. This study employed the following three criteria to retain factors and items: (a) items with factor loading greater than .4, (b) factors with at least three items, and (c) items that do not cross load on the other factors. The results yielded 32 items that comprise seven factors: interest in economic development, hostility toward welfare, interest in wealth management, distrust in government ability, opposition to labor unions, support for the protection of private property, and interest in self-development. We ran an another exploratory-factor analysis using the same methods and items as before, which confirmed that those items loaded well for the seven factors, explaining 59.37% of the total variance. Each factor—hostility toward welfare, interest in self-development, distrust in government ability, interest in economic development, opposition to labor unions, interest in wealth management, and support for the protection of private property—was found to account for 24.08%, 14.11%, 5.12%, 5.01%, 4.27%, 3.40%, and 3.30% of the total variance, respectively. Additionally, the reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of each factor was as follows: hostility toward welfare = .87, interest in self-development = .83, distrust in government ability= .62, interest in economic development = .68, opposition to labor unions = .76, interest in wealth management = .75, and support for the protection of private property = .67. Finally, we created the neoliberalism index by averaging these seven factors. There was a significant difference in how survey participants responded to the five factors of the neoliberalism construct used in this study—namely, interest in economic development, interest in self-development, opposition to labor unions, hostility toward welfare, and support for the protection of private property. In general, support for those five factors tended to increase with the age of the individual, such that participants over 50 years old appeared to place the most emphasis on the importance of economic development, self-development, and the need to protect private property, while showing more unfavorable attitudes toward labor unions and government welfare policies compared to younger age groups. Overall, neoliberalism index, which is the average of all seven factors, also demonstrated similar patterns. People seem to agree more with neoliberal values as they age. We examined the correlation between the neoliberalism index and related measures such as perceived social inequality, perceived social mobility, and long-term orientation. Our data revealed a significant and positive correlation between neoliberalism and perceived social mobility (r (372) = .35, p < .01), and neoliberalism and perceived social inequality (r (372) = .23, p < .01). Neoliberal individuals are likely to perceive the society to which they belong as relatively equal and to believe that they can achieve a satisfactory social status as long as they strive to do so. This tendency is well explained by the significant correlation between neoliberalism and long-term orientation (r (372) = .47, p < .01), that of neoliberalism and the perceived importance of achievement (r (372) = .39, p < .01). Neoliberal individuals’ positive attitudes toward their future status appear to encourage them to work diligently for their future achievements and to improve their status. In contrast, a significant correlation with political cynicism (r (372) = .27, p < .01) indicates neoliberal individuals’ distrust in government. It can be also inferred that neoliberal individuals are politically conservative, given that neoliberalism is negatively correlated to political liberalism (r (372) = -.29, p < .01). Finally, this index is positively correlated to community values (r (372) = .32, p < .01). Furthermore, our neoliberalism index was correlated with Schwartz’s general life values (Schwartz, 1992), including efforts toward self-enhancement (r (372) = .41, p < .01), openness to change (r (372) = .28, p < .01), efforts toward self-transcendence (r (372) = .32, p < .01), and interest in conservation (r (372) = .45, p < .01). Highly neoliberal individuals may strive to develop themselves, seek interesting and stimulating experiences on their own, tend to be altruistic, and conform to what has been established. Given that politically conservative individuals have been considered to be less altruistic and less open to change, the current results, which contradict prior assumptions, seem to indicate that neoliberalism is very different from conservatism. Our data indicated that there is a significant correlation between neoliberalism and the five dimensions of consumer values—namely, efficiency (r (372) = .26, p < .01), quality (r (372) = .37, p < .01), social values (r = .30, p < .01), play (r = .27, p < .01), aesthetics (r = .32, p < .01), and materialism (r = .16, p < .01). Individuals with neoliberal views are likely to consider various factors prudently in choosing products and proper places to shop. What matters to them in their consumption would be satisfactory shopping experiences as a whole rather than just the quality of the products for which they shop. It is interesting to note that highly neoliberal individuals are likely to value possessions. Given the significant correlation between neoliberalism, social mobility, and inequality, neoliberal individuals may believe that they can be like others who achieve a better status than they have and perceive that having more possessions is an efficient tool for acquiring a higher social status. Impulsive buying behavior was not significantly correlated with neoliberalism. Self-development, one of the seven dimensions of this neoliberalism construct, is closely linked to an emphasis on efficient time management and self-control. Neoliberal individuals are likely to be more thorough and careful in their decision-making and consumption behavior. Thus, it is not surprising to observe an insignificant relationship with impulsive buying behavior. Discussion We attempted to determine if individuals’ worldview could explain consumption-related phenomenon such as the extent to which they value possessions. The data supported the prediction that neoliberalism is closely linked not only to basic human values (Schwartz, 1992), but also to consumption phenomena, including materialism (Richins, 2004) and consumer values (e.g., Sánchez-Fernández, Angeles Iniesta-Bonillo, & Holbrook, 2009). Although we were unable to make clear casual inferences from correlational findings, our results shed light on future research in the field of materialism and other consumerbehavior phenomenon using this neoliberalism construct. Experimental manipulation of neoliberal tendencies would generate more intriguing results.

• Hyun Young Cho(Dongguk University, Republic of Korea)
• Seungwoo Chun(Dongguk University, Republic of Korea)
• Joo-Hyoung Ji(Kyungnam University, Republic of Korea)
• Joon Woo Park(Dongguk University, Republic of Korea)
• Chunduk Hwang(Dongguk University, Republic of Korea)