Face Consciousness’s Effect On Counterfeit Luxury Consumption:

China’s rapid economic growth greatly improves Chinese people’s living standard. Those who firstly become rich even form a new class named new-rich class in Chinese society. After being rich, Chinese’s consumption habit gradually changes. Though the traditional virtue of thrift is still being emphasized, luxury consumption has become a phenomenon in China. Not like Europe and America, Chinese luxury consumption has its own characters like young age buyer and luxurious before rich. When inputting "luxury" in the search bar of some famous shopping website, over6000stores and more than110,000items are found, most of which are on big sale, from which we may see that accompanied by the growth of Chinese luxury market is the booming of Chinese luxury counterfeit market. China, when treated as an entity, is not only considered as the big manufacturer of luxury counterfeit but also the significant consumer. In China, according to an online micro-blog survey’s result, there is also an interesting phenomenon that many of those who buy luxury counterfeit are also the target group of original product, taking up to22%. Since current academic research has not explained such phenomenon, it is a topic worth studying.Based on some interviews with luxury counterfeit consumers and careful observation of Chinese luxury counterfeit phenomenon, this study firstly reviews former luxury counterfeit consumption research, then puts forward a sound theoretical framework according to Chinese culture background and theory of behavior science and sociology. On the basis of Theory of Reasoned Action, the author brings up the main effect that face consciousness has an influence on luxury counterfeit purchase intention. In accordance with different categories of luxury products, the author manipulates various purchase situations and proposed a second assumption and its three supporting assumptions. Since nowadays luxury consumption environment is complicated, this thesis adopts experimental manipulation to mock shopping environment according to research need. The results of this study show that ruling out the situation that consumers are recognized as buying luxury counterfeit and lose face, consumers’face consciousness has a significance positive influence on luxury counterfeit purchase intention. The stronger face consciousness the consumer has, the stronger luxury counterfeit purchase intention he or she has. In addition, consumers’perceived symbol level positively regulates the influence face consciousness has on luxury counterfeit purchase intention. Specifically, compared with luxury of low perceived symbol, luxury of high perceived symbol’s positive influence on the relationship of face consciousness and luxury counterfeit purchase intention is more significant. Perceived symbol level is control through three groups of luxury products, namely socially-used luxury and privately-used luxury, luxury with brand visual identification and luxury without brand visual identification, and luxury of high brand visual identification and luxury of low brand visual identification.