Sociologically, conspicuous consumption was thought to comprise socio-economic behaviours practiced by rich people yet, economic research indicated that conspicuous consumption is a socio-economic behaviour common to the poor social-classes and economic groups, and common to the societies of countries with emerging economies. In that context, вЂњconspicuous consumptionвЂќ is discussed either as a behavioural addiction or as a narcissistic behaviour, or both, which are psychologic conditions induced by consumerism - the desire for the immediate gratification of hedonic expectations. In the 1920s, economists, such as Paul Nystrom (1878вЂ“1969), proposed that changes in the style of life, made feasible by the economics of the industrial age, had induced to the mass of society a вЂњphilosophy of futilityвЂќ that would increase the consumption of goods and services as a social fashion an activity done for its own sake. In the 20th century, the significant improvement of the material standard of living of a society, and the consequent emergence of the middle class, broadly applied the term вЂњconspicuous consumptionвЂќ to the men, women, and households who possessed the discretionary income that allowed them to practice the patterns of economic consumption - of goods and services - which were motivated by the desire for prestige, the public display of social status, rather than by the intrinsic, practical utility of the goods and the services proper. In that 19th-century social and historical context, the term вЂњconspicuous consumptionвЂќ was narrowly applied to describe the men, women, and families of the upper class who applied their great wealth as a means of publicly manifesting their social power and prestige, either real or perceived. In the 19th century, the term conspicuous consumption was introduced by the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen (1857вЂ“1929), in the book The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899), to describe the behavioural characteristics of the nouveau riche (new rich) social class who emerged as a result of capital accumulation during the Second Industrial Revolution (ca.

Conspicuous consumption