Status consumption in newly emerging countries: The influence of personality traits and the mediating role of motivation to consume conspicuously

In emerging countries, individuals’ tendency to consume status products to display their wealth and new lifestyle is rising. To unlock the underlmathying reasons for consuming status products in emerging countries, this study brings attention to the mediating role of motivation to consume conspicuously as a missing link between consumers’ personality traits - susceptibility to interpersonal influence, need for uniqueness and status consumption. Using social identity and social comparison theory and drawing on data from 269 Bangladeshi individuals, we found that status consumption is positively influenced by susceptibility to interpersonal influence and need for uniqueness. We also found that the relationship between susceptibility to interpersonal influence and status consumption is partially mediated by the motivation to consume conspicuously. However, the results show that the relationship between need for uniqueness and status consumption is not mediated by the motivation to consume conspicuously.     

Making new products go viral and succeed

Why are some new product introductions more viral and successful than others? This research integrates theories of interpersonal communication and consumer learning to explore this question. Analyzing a unique data set of millions of consumer word-of-mouth transmissions (eWOM) on social media regarding 345 new automobile products introduced during 2008–2015, we find that more innovative products generate more eWOM volume but surprisingly less positive sentiment. These effects vary in magnitude across eWOM channels. However, the use of rich-content communication, pre-announcement, and cobranding strengthens (weakens) the positive (negative) effect of product innovativeness on eWOM volume (sentiment). The results further indicate that eWOM sentiment is a stronger predictor of new product success than eWOM volume. Experimental results reveal more insights into how product innovativeness influences eWOM metrics in several product categories and shed light on the role of excitement and perceived risk as mechanisms underlying these effects. The research offers useful implications for firms to design effective viral marketing campaigns to enhance new product success.     

Market mavens: Psychological influences

Market mavens are consumers who are highly involved in the marketplace and represent an important source of marketplace information to other consumers. Because of their influence on other consumers across a wide range of product domains, market mavens are particularly interesting to retailers. Previous studies have clarified the behavioral tendencies of market mavens. The present study focuses on psychological influences on market mavenism. A structural‐equation model of the normative influences on the psychology of the market maven is developed and tested. The hypothesized model describes relationships between global psychological constructs (self‐esteem, tendency to conform), consumer traits (susceptibility to interpersonal influence, consumer need for uniqueness), and a domain‐specific tendency (opinion leadership), placing the market maven construct in a normative, nomological network. The hypothesized model was supported by the data. The findings reveal the complexity of the market maven by disclosing their susceptibility to normative influence despite their need for uniqueness. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Effect of consumer self‐confidence on information search and dissemination: Mediating role of subjective knowledge

Consumers search for information about products to make a satisfactory purchase decision and gain knowledge about new features and updates. Consumers also use this knowledge to be vocal about their product experience because several consumers seek interpersonal recommendations. This phenomenon has contributed to the emergence of information search (IS) and information dissemination (ID) as a key research area in the field of consumer behaviour. However, the role of personal factors such as consumer self‐confidence and subjective knowledge has received little attention in the extant IS and ID literature. The major argument of this study is that information acquisition confidence and social outcome confidence enhance subjective knowledge and consequently increase the will of consumers to search and disseminate information in the context of smartphone buyers in India. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the proposed hypotheses using a convenience sample of 259 consumers obtained through a cross‐sectional survey. The study shows that subjective knowledge is crucial in strengthening the association between consumer self‐confidence and consumer intention for IS and ID. Additionally, enhancing consumer’s social outcome confidence contributes towards high subjective knowledge and consequently accelerates information dissemination. Results suggest that firms could focus on enhancing the social outcome confidence and subjective knowledge of consumers to motivate them to disseminate information. The results also show that consumers with high confidence in information acquisition ability have the high subjective knowledge and are more likely to search for information. Overall, this study contributes to the emerging literature regarding the role of personal factors in IS and dissemination behaviour.     

The impact of branding on low‐income adolescents: A vicious cycle?

This study examines the impact of consumerism and consumer culture on low‐income British adolescents. Specifically, it investigates the effects of branding and advertising on the formation of selfconcept clarity (SCC) and consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII). A comparative study was conducted between two groups, low‐ and high‐income teenagers, assessing SCC and CSII by means of quantitative scales. It was found that low‐income teenagers are less clear in their self‐concept and are more susceptible to interpersonal influence than their high‐income counterparts. A significant negative correlation between the two scales revealed that the less clear one's self‐concept is, the more susceptible one is to interpersonal influence. It is proposed that an inability to “keep up” with the latest fashion trends (due to restricted consumption opportunities) may result in a damaged self‐concept among low‐income teenagers, which leads to heightened susceptibility to consumption pressures and hence heightens the negative socio‐psychological impacts of living in poverty. The results of the study are reviewed in terms of branding, advertising, and consumer behavior and a proposed conceptual model of branding's impact on low‐income teenagers is presented as a “vicious cycle.” © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A structural look at consumer innovativeness and self‐congruence in new product purchases

Consumer innovativeness and new product purchasing literatures are replete with solid yet unrelated theories that have not been considered simultaneously as part of a larger psychological framework. This oversight limits the ability of practitioners to effectively target the valuable consumer innovators market segment. In this study, an approach/avoidance framework of new product purchase intentions is discussed and empirically tested via structural equation modeling. Consumer innovativeness, self‐congruence, and satisfaction play the role of approach mechanisms, while perceived risk acts as an avoidance mechanism. The authors combine a set of related yet disconnected theories, while suggesting a means of appealing to consumer innovators through a specific form of self‐congruence. A sample of 741 students is employed to examine these issues. Several notable findings are highlighted, including verification of indirect relationships between the independent variables and behavioral intent. Model fit is excellent and results are consistent across the handheld devices, home entertainment, and music industries. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The influences of consumer innovativeness and consumer evaluation attributes in the purchase of fashionable ethnic wear in India

This paper highlights the consumer motivations for purchase of an innovative product like fashionable ethnic wear in India. It attempts to combine consumer innovativeness constructs and consumer evaluation attributes to understand buying behaviour in fashionable ethnic wear through a consumer survey. It confirms the relationship between product usage (the number of brands bought) and ethnic wear domain‐specific innovativeness. It also explores the correlations among different dimensions of consumer innovativeness like domain‐specific innovativeness, optimum stimulation level and consumers' need for uniqueness constructs. It shows the difference in importance attached to the chosen consumer innovativeness constructs and consumer evaluation attributes by buyers and non‐buyers in the purchase process.     

消费者创新性的结构测量及对创新性行为的影响

现有文献比较全面地揭示了消费者创新性与新产品创新性行为之间的多重关系,并探讨了这些关系产生的条件和机制。但绝大多数的理论和经验研究都将消费者创新性视为一个单维构念来进行操作性界定和测量,很少有研究去探索其内在结构并在此基础上检验每个维度与新产品创新性行为之间的关系。文章旨在探讨消费者创新性的结构维度并在此基础上观察不同类型的消费者创新性对创新性行为的影响。结论表明,消费者创新性是一个包括感知创新性和认知创新性的双维构念;作为整体的消费者创新性与新产品采用行为并没有显著的相关性,只有认知创新性才与新产品的采用行为正向相关,而感知创新性只与新产品的创新性信息搜寻正向相关。上述结论为消费者创新性提供了一个新的认识,也为今后学者从该角度来研究有关消费者创新性的其他问题提供了变量测量的工具,而且还为新产品的营销实践提供了新的管理启示。     

Young consumers’ innovativeness in apparel choices: A model including consumer self‐confidence

In industries with network effects, consumer innovators help to trigger the critical mass needed for a product innovation to be successful. Thus, firms can benefit from actions that increase consumer innovativeness in their target markets. Consumer innovativeness has been associated with variables such as hedonic shopping motivation, impulsiveness and status seeking. There is limited work on the impact on consumer innovativeness of consumer characteristics that reflect consumers’ self‐confident ability to choose. This study proposes and tests a model for consumer innovativeness that incorporates variables from previous research and uncovers the importance of consumer self‐confidence. We collect survey data from 534 Chilean girls, ages 10–15. After building constructs with the help of exploratory factor analysis, we analyze the data with linear regression estimation (via OLS). Our results reveal that consumer self‐confidence is positively and significantly related to consumer innovativeness. Our findings also add evidence ‐from a younger age group‐ regarding the significance of status seeking, impulsiveness and hedonic shopping motivation on consumer innovativeness. Results suggest that companies could leverage consumer innovativeness by taking actions to increase consumers’ self‐confidence. Innovative apparel choices in young consumers could possibly also be strengthened by communicating status achievement and by enhancing shopping enjoyment.     

I love the product but will you? The role of interpersonal attachment styles in social projection

Individuals often have a need to predict the preferences of others (e.g., offering a recommendation, gift giving). In doing so, it is not uncommon that individuals project their attitudes and preferences onto others. Extant consumer research literature related to social projection focuses largely on particular situational variables that influence social projection. The current research adds to a smaller body of consumer research which focuses on specific characteristics of consumers’ selves that may drive an individual's tendency to project his/her attitudes onto others. Specifically, the present paper explores an individual‐level moderator of social projection, namely, interpersonal attachment style. Across five studies, interpersonal attachment style, and attachment anxiety, specifically, is shown to influence social projection. In addition, the mechanism underlying this relationship is demonstrated. The results show that high (vs. low) anxious attachment individuals tend to naturally consider more counter‐valence attributes of a product, that is., liked attributes of a disliked product and disliked attributes of a liked product, and this availability of counter‐valence attributes lowers social projection. Important theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Strategic recommendations for new product adoption in the Chinese market

ABSTRACT

This study extended current understandings of the relationships among domain specific innovativeness (DSI), the desire for unique consumer products (DUCPs), perceived new product characteristics (PNPCs), and Chinese consumers’ new product adoption behavior. It also investigated the indirect effect of vicarious learning behavior on Chinese consumers’ acceptance of new products. Data was collected in Shanghai, China. The results demonstrated that DSI and PNPCs were the primary drivers of new product adoption. The study also showed that PNPCs played a mediating role in the relationship between vicarious learning and the adoption of new products by Chinese consumers. The results confirmed the predictive power of DSI and how PNPCs affect Chinese innovative buying behavior. The results also suggest that PNPCs facilitate Chinese consumers’ new product learning behavior.     

Consumer Preference for Status Symbolism of Clothing: The Case of the Czech Republic

During the past three decades, consumer demand for luxury goods has been growing on a global scale. The luxury and status market base has expanded beyond the traditional affluent consumer segment to include an increasingly heterogeneous group of consumers. Despite the substantial size, greater reach, and significant growth of the luxury goods market, status consumption has been treated as an atypical and peripheral subject in consumer research. The authors develop a conceptual model of psychological determinants of status seeking through consumption. The model considers the effects of three general traits (namely, status concern (SC), public self‐consciousness (PSC), and self‐esteem (SE)) and one consumption‐related consumer trait (namely, susceptibility to normative social influence (SNSI)) on preference for status meaning, which in turn influences consumer interest in the product. The conceptual model is tested with data from a survey of 1000+ respondents drawn from the Czech Republic, a country where the recent market liberalization has unleashed an inflow of luxury goods from marketers from the West. Face‐to‐face home‐based structured interviews were conducted by an international market research agency. The hypothesized causal relationships are all supported. The effects of SC, PSC, and SE on SNSI and preference for status meaning (PSM) are significant and in the expected direction. Additionally, SNSI is found to exert a significant positive influence on PSM, and these two constructs, in turn, have significant positive effects on consumer interest in clothing. The conceptual model and empirical evidence enhance the existing knowledge of the antecedents and outcomes of status consumption. The study advances a better understanding of the psychology of consumer adoption of status consumption; equally important, it also highlights the value of extending consumer theories from established to emerging market economies and back again from still‐evolving to long‐standing marketplaces.     

How Attachment Affects the Strength of Peer Influence on Adolescent Consumer Behavior

This research examined how attachment affected the peer influence on adolescent consumer behavior. Results showed that attachment toward family and toward peers emerged together. Adolescent attachment anxiety strengthened the peer influence in consumption while attachment avoidance weakened the peer influence. Anxiety was positively related to adolescents’ perception of friends’ greater knowledge, spending when shopping with friends, and motivation to comply with friends’ suggestions on purchases directly and indirectly through consumer susceptibility to informational and normative influence. In contrast, attachment avoidance decreased the tendency to shop often with friends and the motivation to comply in a purchase. This study revealed that the influence of individual attachment orientations on interpersonal relationships can be extended to the field of consumption.     

Status consumption and role-relaxed consumption: A tale of two retail consumers

Our study contrasts status-seeking consumers with role-relaxed consumers across personal, social influence, and market influence factors. The results of a survey of 598 consumers supported all but four of 15 hypotheses. The findings suggest that status-seeking consumers: (1) tend to conform to group norms, yet (2) maintain a need for uniqueness, (3) are susceptible to normative, but not necessarily informational interpersonal influence, (4) can be opinion leaders, but not necessarily opinion seekers, and (5) have tendencies that contrast sharply with role-relaxed consumer tendencies. In contrast, role-relaxed consumers: (1) do not generally conform to group norms, (2) are typically not susceptible to informational nor normative interpersonal influence, (3) do not pay attention to social comparison information, (4) are neither opinion leaders nor opinion seekers, and (5) have tendencies that contrast sharply with status consumer tendencies.     

Hierarchical effects of product attributes on actualized innovativeness in the context of high-tech products

This paper examines the influence of product attributes in high-tech products on consumers' actualized innovativeness. In Stage 1, product attributes are identified based on interviews with consumers. In Stage 2, a survey is conducted with a different set of consumers in order to classify the product attributes into primary, secondary or tertiary attributes and to test the hypotheses. The results reveal that primary, secondary and tertiary attributes have a reverse hierarchical influence on actualized innovativeness. That is, tertiary attributes influence the actualized innovativeness most, followed by secondary, and then by primary attributes. However, only primary attributes positively moderate the relationship between inherent and actualized innovativeness. These results can help marketing researchers and practitioners understand the influence of product attributes on behavioral aspects of consumer innovativeness.     

Feedback effects of brand extensions on the brand image of global brands: a comparison between Spain and Norway

Abstract

Global brands often attempt to increase their sales through the launch of brand extensions. Such a strategy may, however, dilute existing brand beliefs at an international level, as two sets of data from Norway and Spain indicate. This paper illuminates how the attitude towards a brand extension affects the image of a parent brand. The extension attitude is mainly determined by the degree of perceived fit between the extension and the parent brand image. In the Spanish sample, it is also determined by the degree of familiarity with the parent brand and the perceived fit at the product category level. After analysing these relationships, the paper focuses on the moderating role of two dimensions of consumer innovativeness: hedonist innovativeness (tied to need for stimulation) and social innovativeness (tied to need for uniqueness). Finally, the cultural orientation of the origin country is analysed as a moderating factor.     

Because it is brand new! Recency heuristic for product innovativeness evaluation

This research identifies recency heuristic utilized by consumers with limited prior knowledge for product innovativeness evaluation. Consumers with limited prior knowledge of a product category perceived a new product as more innovative when its release date was more recent, while consumers with prior knowledge remained uninfluenced by recency information (Study 1). The effect was replicated at the product level (Study 2). It further demonstrates two critical boundary conditions—when recency was either irrelevant information or a rationally legitimate evaluative tool, recency heuristic was inapplicable (Study 3). The present research draws attention to the role of recency in conceptualizing product innovativeness and further elaborates the understanding of how the construct of innovativeness is represented in consumers' minds by focusing on the conceptual relationship of novelty and recency. It also contributes to the heuristic literature by proposing recency as an evaluative heuristic tool for innovativeness assessment. Results provide managers with practical insight into whether to highlight or downplay product release date information depending on their target audience and the level of product innovativeness.     

Understanding the role of social influence in piquing curiosity and influencing attitudes and behaviors in a social network environment

Social networks provide an innovative means for facilitating social influence as well as arousing consumer curiosity. However, research on how social influence impacts attitudes and behaviors in this context is limited. Further, even less research exists examining how curiosity impacts consumers’ behaviors, which is concerning since curiosity may be especially relevant in an online setting. To overcome these gaps, two studies were conducted which demonstrate that a consumer's curiosity toward a social network post is influenced by the group membership of the individual who created the post. In turn, curiosity leads to more positive attitudes toward the experience described or represented in the post, which leads to higher intentions to undertake that experience. Additionally, consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence is found to moderate the relationship between group membership and curiosity. If susceptibility to interpersonal influence is strong enough, content posted by a dissociative group member can also arouse curiosity and positively influence attitudes and behavioral intentions.     

The Effect of Word of Mouth on Consumers’ Attitudes Toward Products and Their Purchase Probability

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of word of mouth on consumers’ attitudes toward the product and its purchase probability. Furthermore, we examine the moderating influence of susceptibility to interpersonal influence, which is a personal characteristic of the receiver of word of mouth information. A quasi experiment was conducted, in which subjects were asked to evaluate a product, while being subjected to positive or negative word of mouth. Our results indicate that negative word of mouth has an impact on consumers’ attitudes and purchase probability, while the influence of positive word of mouth was not significant. Interestingly, susceptibility to interpersonal influence does not play a moderating role. While the experimental design with an unknown word of mouth source and fictitious brand allowed the comparison of results for the positive, negative, and control group, such conditions do not correspond to an actual market setting.     

Consumer acceptance of a revolutionary technology-driven product: The role of adoption in the industrial design development

Understanding how consumers adopt a state of the art product is important for the development and marketing of innovative products. The purpose of this study is to examine factors that affect consumer intentions to use a revolutionary technology-driven product (RTP). The research integrates two innovation adoption models, the Unified Technology Acceptance and Utilization Theory (UTAUT) and the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) model with two antecedents of consumer characteristics: consumer innovativeness and perceived value of a new product. The study examines consumer responses to an unfamiliar product, the TEASER which is a conceptual digital cookbook that offers taste sampling, thereby providing an online food-tasting experience. Consumers who are prone to innovativeness and who perceive value in a RTP’s aesthetics are able to discern the conditions that support their intent to use such a product. The resulting model expands the UTAUT and TTF theories by showing that UTAUT variables mediate between the variables of TTF and adoption intentions. These results support the need for nonlinear industrial development processes involving consumers.