19 © Academy of Marketing Science 2016 K.K. Kim (ed.), Celebrating America’s Pastimes: Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Marketing?, Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-26647-3_2 Need for Status as a Motive for the Conspicuous Consumption of Cause-Related Goods Catherine M. Johnson and Ayesha Tariq Introduction “A man’s Self is the sum of all he can call his own. Not only his body and psychic powers but also his clothes, his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputa- tion and works, his lands and horses, his yacht and bank account.”—William James (1890) In other words, humans perceive their possessions to be a representation of their identity or self. Display in the form of possessions, attire, or actions represent a person’s perceived or actual place in society, be it related to character traits, reli- gious affiliations, professional associations, or even wealth and social standing. One of the recognized phenomenon of display as a representation is conspicuous con- sumption, defined as the intentional display of expensive goods by the nouveau- riche to indicate financial status (Veblen 1899). The concept has been inextricably linked with luxury goods, but conspicuous displays, whether of wealth or other affiliations, are a way of signaling belonging to any social group (Ashforth and Mael 1989) or possessing certain individual qualities (Connelly et al. 2011). Corporations and consumers are driven by a desire to be seen as responsible mem- bers of society and hope to thus command social respect. In essence, companies and consumers engaging in prosocial behavior may not be doing so for purely altruistic reasons (Basil and Weber 2006). It is possible that the purchase of visible luxury items and of items visibly associated with a social cause are both motivated by simi- lar mechanisms of an attempt to be seen as belonging to a desirable social group. The first contribution of this study is the application of conspicuous consumption to the prosocial behavior context as a lens for examining purchases of visibly C.M. Johnson (*) • A. Tariq University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA e-mail: cmjohnson8@cba.ua.edu; atariq@crimson.ua.edu