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The extent of relative deprivation in upwardly mobile South Africans and its impact on financial attitudes

The purpose of the research was to explore the relationship between relative deprivation and the attitudes driving consumption of upwardly mobile South Africans. Various propositions presented in the literature were tested within the context of upwardly mobile South Africans. Two areas of focus of this study is (1) the extent and impact of relative deprivation on attitudes towards consumption and personal finances, and (2) an assessment of the differences in attitudes towards consumption and personal finances of this group. The study found that this group has a high level of self-esteem and cannot be defined as relatively deprived. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that social comparison within this group does not encourage consumption for the purpose of the achievement of social status. Of particular relevance to South Africa is that the study has demonstrated that there are very few differences in attitudes between the different race groups. This confirms that upwardly mobile South Africans are fairly homogenous in terms of their experience of relative deprivation given that both upwardly mobile blacks and whites have high self-esteem. It also demonstrates that the experience of relative deprivation by the different race groups may be more consistent with each other than previous studies have shown. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:up/oai:repository.up.ac.za:2263/27053
Date05 August 2012
CreatorsSteeneveldt, Deirdre Tanya
ContributorsDr C Corder, ichelp@gibs.co.za
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
Rights© 2011 University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria.

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