Cataloged from PDF version of article.Materialism was explored in twelve countries using qualitative data, measures of consumer
desires, measures of perceived necessities, and adapted versions of the Belk (1985) materialism
scales with student samples. The use of student samples and provisionary evidence for cross-cultural
reliability and validity for the scales, make the quantitative results tentative, but they
produced some interesting patterns that were also supported by the qualitative data. Romanians
were found to be the most materialistic, followed by the U.S.A., New Zealand, Ukraine, Germany,
and Turkey. These results suggest that materialism is neither unique to the West nor directly
related to affluence, contrary to what has been assumed in prior treatments of the development of
consumer culture
