People desire to lead situations and live competently in their daily lives, but they often feel powerless as they are swept along by circumstances. For example, individuals experience powerlessness when they feel unable to control a situation, such as being disregarded or reprimanded by a supervisor at work, or being unable to purchase a desired item because it is too expensive. When people feel powerless, they experience negative emotions such as frustration, sadness, and anger, and most tend to engage in compensatory consumption as one of their behaviors to reduce or escape powerlessness. Reflecting this compensatory consumption psychology, consumption behavior toward power-symbolic products—products that demonstrate one's competence—also emerges as a means of alleviating powerlessness. The purpose of this study is to examine the sources of powerlessness experienced by consumers, investigate what consumption behaviors consumers exhibit as compensatory consumption when they feel powerless, and analyze the relationship with materialism, a consumer value that can influence compensatory consumption. To this end, Study 1 conducted an exploratory investigation targeting male and female consumers in their 20s through 50s, and Study 2 empirically analyzed the effects of powerlessness on power-symbolic product pursuit and the influence of consumers' inherent materialistic tendency on power-symbolic products when consumers feel powerless. Finally, the study's conclusions, comprehensive significance, and future research directions are discussed in order. This study has significance in three aspects. First, it demonstrated the effects of powerlessness on consumption behavior through both exploratory research and empirical analysis, centering on consumer powerlessness. Second, it identified not only the sources of powerlessness but also the types of negative emotions arising from powerlessness, and analyzed the compensatory consumption patterns involving power-symbolic products aimed at alleviating these emotions. Lastly, through the finding that the higher the materialism, the greater the pursuit of power-symbolic products when consumers feel powerless, the study revealed the importance of consumer materialistic values. This paper can be characterized as one that attempts to connect not only the relationship between consumer powerlessness and compensatory consumption, but also the link between materialism and consumers' pursuit of power-symbolic products.