Empirical Research About The Influence Mechanism Of Reference Group On Conspicuous Consumption Behavior

With the markedly growing of our country's economy, the quality and quantity of people's life becoming better and better and the self-protecting consciousness of consumer is awaking. Along with that, phenomenon of conspicuous consumption spread all over the country, and conspicuous consumption behavio(rCCB)turn to many people's optional consumption way. CCB is often pursued by consumers who want to show their impression,status,degree,taste,prestige and stratum to their important reference group, in order to satisfying their psychological needs,demonstrating belonging to/dissociation from a group,or searching for social resource such as power,status and prestige through consuming special brand commodity in public. It is not just a consumption way for ostentation.Although CCB is going round in the country and many people give their attention to it, there are only some plain studies about it. There is lacking of related researches in marketing perspective, especially lack of forming mechanism and influenced factors researches in context of Chinese culture. There are empty of deep understanding about inner motivation of consumers'CCB.The analysis of connotation of CCB reflects that the main motivations of consumers'CCB are as follows: aspiration for ostentation,demonstrating or attesting one's status,imitating high social-order people's life pattern,searching for prestige,strengthening self-concept, etc. This article distinguishes CCB into four scales: social status demonstrating, interpersonal mediation, communication of belonging to/dissociation from a group and materialistic hedonism. Whether in order to demonstrating social status or searching for prestige or power, it must have its base. We are not just natural person; we are also social person, all of us belonging to one or more social group. People always inspect others'behaviors before take actions. If one person dissociation from all groups thoroughly, he or she do not has the base to showing off his or her social status, searching for prestige, say nothing of pursing of social resources. Through the above reasoning, one person's reference group must be a fatal influenced factor of his CCB.Reference group often defined as realistic or virtual individual or groups who have important correlation with one person's judgments,pursing or actions. A person's classmates,friends,colleagues or same membership people are all his or her important reference group. The influence of reference group on CCB are also distinguished into four scales——informational influence,value-expressive influence,utilitarian influence and face consciousness.Following the above logical inferring, this article brings forward four hypotheses: H1: the informational influence of reference group has positive influence on CCB; H2: the utilitarian influence of reference group positively correlate with CCB; H3: the value-expressive influence of reference group has plus correlation with CCB; H4: there is positive relationship between face consciousness and CCB. Then an influence mechanism model of reference group on CCB was formulated (re. figure1-3). After that, measuring scales about CCB and reference group influence were designed based on some related researches. Then a primary survey was conducted to test the consistency reliability and validity of the preliminary measuring scales. Furthermore, a formal survey was carried out to test the above hypotheses. The main conclusions are as follows: First, CCB were consisted of social status demonstration (including demonstration of success,wealth and prestige),interpersonal meditation (equal to the influence of social relationship),materialistic hedonism ( colligating factors of information acquisition,enjoyment of consumption and purchasing for high price),communication of belonging to/dissociation from a group (referring consumers'attitude to demographic,social economic,racial or cultural characteristics of group). Second, the most significantly influence factor of CCB is face consciousness. It have positive correlations with social status demonstration,interpersonal mediation,materialistic hedonism and communication of belonging to/dissociation from a group. Third, the relationship between value-expressive influence and CCB is very complex. It has plus correlation with materialistic hedonism; it also negatively correlated with interpersonal mediation and communication of belonging to/dissociation from a group. Forth, informational influence does only influence the communication of belonging to/dissociation from a group. Finally, utilitarian influence also only has impact on communication of belonging to/dissociation from a group.From the perspective of reference group influence, this article has studied the operation mechanism of CCB. It have significance in understanding the increasingly behavior of conspicuous consumption. At micro level, those conclusions also have constructive meanings to related businesses and managers. First of all, catching on the developing tendency of consumer's consumption psyche and behavior do beneficial to set up marketing advantage; secondly, viewing the CCB rationally, comprehending the nature of people's CCB will help enterprises construct competence advantage; related corporations can adopt special brand strategy and advertising to shape symbolic meanings of commodities to attract consumers; thirdly, realizing the important influence of face consciousness; consuming some brands of commodities at the presence of some important reference group members is a fatal way of acquiring or enhancing one's face. Consumption behavior related to face is Chinese special CCB.