This research improves the field's understanding of subsistence consumers by investigating how low socioeconomic class relates to expectations of complexity from new products. The study tests a model of the relationship between consumer socioeconomic class, self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and knowledge about product domains, and the influence of self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and product domain knowledge on consumer expectations of complexity when facing a new product technology. A sample of 266 Colombian consumers representing different socio-economic classes is used to test the model using structural equation modeling. The results show that self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and product domain knowledge are predictive of expectations of complexity, with low self-esteem, low capabilities, and low product knowledge leading to higher complexity expectations. Socioeconomic status relates closely to self-esteem, self-assessed capabilities, and product domain knowledge and can be used as a surrogate for the individual-level constructs.