The Influence Of Relative Social Status On Brand Selection And Preference

The present study aimed to explore how the social status influenced individual's brand consumption behaviors from the psychological and psychophysiological views.Experiment 1 was a one factor(others' social status:high,median,low)within subject design.Prior to the main experiment,all participants finished an attention task and were assigned different levels based on their performance.The best participants performed best would be assigned as “Golden member(high status);the participants performed averagely would be assigned as “Silver member(median status)and the participants performed worst would be assigned as “Ordinary member(low status).Unknown to the participants,all of them were assigned as “Silver member” independent of their actual performance.In the main experiment,twenty-eight participants were instructed to choose from two products with different brands(one was a national brand and the other one was a bargain brand)while the other attributes of these two products were comparable.The product they choose would be given to them while the left one would be given to their partner who was actually a confederate.By manipulating the social status of the confederate,we explored the influence of relative status on the participants' brand selection.The results supported our hypothesis that the participants showed a trend in selection preference: the higher the relative status the partner had,the less likely the participant chose a product with national brand comparing to a product with bargain brand.The post-hoc questionnaire revealed that when the participants confronted with other individuals with a higher social status,they would consider more on what the other person wants,and they also believed that the individuals with high social status would prefer the product with national brand more.Experiment 2 was a 3(others' status:high,median,low)× 3(others' pricing:high,median and low)within subject design.Similar to Experiment 1,twenty-four subjects were set as “Silver member” in an attention task before the main experiment.Participants were shown their partner's status and their pricing on a given product.Then the participants were instructed to give their own pricing on the same product.Event-Related Potentials(ERPs)technology was used to record participants' brain activities during the experiment.Results showed that the other's(partner)pricing had a significant impact on the change of the individual's own pricing(their final pricing given during the EEG task – their baseline pricing measured one week before the experiment).From ERP results,we observed a significant main effect of status on N2 component such that the N2 of the pricing of the Silver member was significantly smaller than the N2 triggered by the pricing of the Golden and Ordinary members.There was also a significant main effect of pricing on the early LPP such that the early LPP component triggered by the medium pricing was significantly smaller than the low and high pricing.Besides,there were also a significant interaction on P2 and later LPP:(1)P2 showed not only a lager amplitude under high pricing of Ordinary member than medium pricing of them but also a smaller amplitude under low pricing of Golden member than medium pricing of them;(2)the later LPP component showed a larger amplitude under high pricing of Ordinary member than low pricing of them.These results indicated that when people's choice interacted with others',their own brand selection would be impacted by the status of others.The higher the status of others,the more likely the individual would take others into consideration.In addition,individuals would more likely to consider the feelings and desires of people with highstatus and with the same status as themselves.They also pay more attention on others whose pricings were close to their own original pricing and adjusted their own pricing accordingly.