Airlines will, as was posted earlier, award status on fewer miles to those who spend more. Some of this is documented, such as AA's point scheme that awards elite levels for 2/3 of the nominal miles if they were all in paid F, 4/5 if they were all in paid J.

Once you have a level, though, I have yet to see a case where anyone cares how you got it.

(Exception: In a 2001 experiment, AA gave EXP status to a bunch of people who didn't fly much but whom they thought would swing corporate travel $$ their way. It didn't work. These people generally didn't have the travel knowledge or experience of "true" EXPs and were considered a pain in the neck by EXP desk reservation agents. They got LESS than the usual level of service, though nobody from AA will admit that for the record.)

An airline may care how much you paid for a specific flight, as in prioritizing within an elite level for operational upgrades, but that does not carry over from one flight to the next.