The Influence Of Embarrassment On Consumer Conspicuous Consumption

Emotion plays an important role in consumer behavior. The impact of emotion on consumer decision has become a hot topic in marketing. Embarrassment is a common emotion and consumers frequently feel embarrassed during their purchase process. Embarrassment as a short-lived negative psychological response can significantly influence consumer purchase behavior. The current research examines how incidental feeling of embarrassment would influence consumer conspicuous consumption.Study1was conducted to test embarrassment does influence conspicuous consumption, and the impact happened by changing consumers’motivation. The study proved that embarrassed consumers tend to avoid a branded product with salient brand logos. Meanwhile, hiding motivation is the intermediate variable. So embarrassment makes consumers reduce conspicuous consumption by leading consumers to hiding their motivation.Study2explored consumers with different levels of self-esteem would act differently to the effect of embarrassment. In this study, while consumers with high self-esteem were not affected by embarrassment, embarrassed consumers with low self-esteem avoid conspicuous consumption to a greater extent when they are feeling embarrassed.Study3examined another moderator, self-brand connection. In this study, we found embarrassment has little effect on consumers with low connection with a brand. In contrast, consumers with high self-brand connection will be more susceptible to embarrassment. So the greater overlaps people feel between self and a brand, the more likely people would avoid the product with salient brand logos when they feel embarrassed.Finally, we summarized the results, discussed the implications, contributions and limits of our research and gave some advice on future research.