Research On The Influence Of Self-differentiation On Moral Consumption

With the abundance of material conditions in modern society,consumers'self-concept plays an increasingly important role in their consumption decision.At the same time,with gradual increase of consumer awareness of public morality,the ethical consumption which is positioned on no no harm to humans beings,animals,environment,has gradually become one of the hot topic that governments,companies,and markets are concerned about.Based on Higgins's Self-discrepancy theory,Peloza(2013)found that participants reported more positive purchase intentions in response to the ethical than to the self-benefit appeal(such as performance and price)when their actual-self fall short of ought-self;and those participants without initiating self-discrepancy did not show this preference.However,the research is still problematic in the following way:the definition of self-mechanism influencing consumption preference is not clear.Is it the discrepancy in self-concept responsible for subjects' different preferences on products with its different types of appealing or is the manipulation that heightened self-concept leading to participants make choices consistent with their self-concept?At the same time,since the self-concept is largely influenced by culture,it is still to be verified whether the results from the perspective of self-discrepancies are applicable to our country.In this research,two experiments were designed to explore the impact of self-discrepancy on ethical consumption.Cross-culturally validated on Peloza's research was conducted firstly in Experiment 1,the discrepancy between ought-self and actual-self was initiated through autobiographical recall,subjects were divided into self-discrepancy group and control group.Pictures of products with different types of appealing were presented to each group respectively so as to explore the purchase intentions.The results showed that the main effects of the two independent variables were not significant while the interaction effect was significant,showing that when the product positioned on self-benefit appeals,the purchase intentions of subjects in self-discrepancy group was significantly lower than that in the control group;while the purchase intention of products with ethical appeal is not affected by the state of self-discrepancy.Based on experiment 1,we perform a further experiment 2 with an independent variable included,also added the level without self-discrepancy in the level of manipulation,which means the actual-self consistent with ought-self.The results showed that under self-consistency conditions,subjects'willingness to purchase ethical appealing goods is significantly higher than that of self-benefit appeals.Under the condition of self-discrepancy,the preferences of the subjects for purchasing different products are influenced by the product type.At the same time,for the type of product,if the product is of hedonic goods,the subjects will prefer the ethical appealing commodity;if the product is of utilitarian goods,the self-benefit appeal product will be more likely to be favored by the subjects.Finally,with the analysis on the experimental results,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)Different from the results of Peloza's,under the circumstance that with no control of type of products,the subjects'purchase intention toward ethical products remains stable,while the product with self-benefit attributes are affected by the state of self-discrepancy,indicating that the differences in self-discrepancy will affect consumer decision-making,while there is no significant impact on ethical consumption.(2)When ought-self is consistent with the actual-self,that is,when those two self-concept is consistency,consumers prefer ethical consumption.The relationship between self-concept and ethical consumption is affected by the type of products.Compared to utilitarian goods,subjects have preference on hedonic goods with ethical attributes.