The Influence Of Reference Group On Luxury Consumption Decisions

Two main points exist in this essay. One is the luxury goods, the other is the reference group.Internationally, the luxury goods are defined as:"A kind of human survival and development beyond the scope of consumer needs, they are scarce, unique and so on". Meanwhile, the luxury is not a necessity. With the increasing development of economy, luxury goods in the modern era have evolved into a means of rich people’s basic needs. From an economic sense, for the consumption of luxury goods is essentially a high-end consumer behavior, and its own praise and not derogatory of the points. From a social sense, for the consumption of luxury goods is a personal taste and improve quality of life, personal and family consumption behavior. The characteristics of luxury goods are high quality, expensive, rare, high-end status symbols, etc., and the luxury goods are synonymous with luxury brand, it also embodies the form of luxury features. At the same time, look at the global luxury market, the author of the luxury goods in accordance with relevant scholars classification, based on existing market as well as time and space concept, in the most convenient way to get the luxury and the difficulty of how to quickly and smoothly get the luxury, the luxury goods obtained under different levels of difficulty can be defined into inaccessible luxury and accessible luxury.Today, all kinds of consumers make their consumption choices independently, social factors will largely affect their choice, and by the society Impact, which is an important reference groups’means and working ways, it highlights the social nature of consumers’behavior. In a large number of social psychology and consumer behavior research, the impact of reference groups is recognized as three types, including:(1) informational reference group influence;(2) utilitarian reference group influence;(3) value-expressive reference group influence. This study follows in the definition of Park and Lessig which is about reference group influence, which is the most widely cited study of consumer behavior. In the study of consumer behavior, attention to different consumer research results of many contexts. In this study, the author focuses on luxury branded products which are used for public consumption and private consumption situation context. Therefore, the different effects of reference groups on consumers of luxury brands are more significant than consumer behavior under the premise of this research into public luxury and private luxury, and in the study under different consumption situations Luxury brands are defined as public luxury brands and private luxury brands in order to comparing.In summary, according to a variety of reference group influence theory, the goal of this essay is to examine the different consumer situations, consumers of luxury brands for different types of purchase decisions, which under different types of luxury brands,inclnding public consumption inaccessible luxury brands, private consumption inaccessible luxury brands and public consumption accessible luxury brands, private consumption accessible luxury brands,then take four definitions to be compared. The impact of luxury brands includes three aspects then they can affect different consumer groups in different types of consumer choices.The empirical results show that:(1) in different consumption situations and different types of luxury brands, the reference groups’ influences on consumers are significantly different;(2) according to inaccessible luxury brands, the informational reference group influences are significantly higher than the influences on accessible luxury brands;(3)in the public consumption, the utilitarian reference group influence and the value-expressive reference group influence are significantly higher than the influences of the private consumption. This essay and this research can influence marketing researchers and sales manager to make the better decision of how to deal with today’s luxury market.