Research On The Influence Of Social Crowding On Consumers' Willingness To Self-gifting

In recent years,social crowding,as a phenomenon and situation,has attracted the attention of many marketing scholars.Social crowding has a subtle influence on individual consumption behavior.Previous studies have found that high social crowding leads to high calorie intake,brand attachment and the choice of safetyoriented products.And we found that consumers are increasingly self-gifting for some reason.Many advertisements also appear the relevant slogans,such as "love yourself,then buy it for yourself","a jewelry,a reward " and so on.Based on the observation of this phenomenon and the reasoning of theoretical research,this study takes social crowding as independent variable,combines uncertainty identity theory and meaning maintain model to explain the impact of social crowding on consumers' self-gifting willingness.Refers to previous research literature on social crowding,self-uncertainty,justification and self-giving and some other relevant papers.Four experiments were conducted to prove the hypothesis.The results show that :(1)The degree of social crowding will affect consumers' willingness to self-gifting.When consumers are in a high social crowding environment,consumers will have a higher willingness to self-gifting;When consumers are in a low social crowding environment,consumers are also less willing to self-gifting.(2)Disordered experience and self-uncertainty play a mediated role in the influence of social crowding on self-gifting intention.When consumers in the high social crowding situation,they were in an abnormal situation,resulting in discomfort,that leads to disordered experience.And this kind of dissonant experience can cause consumer become self-uncertainty.According to the meaning maintenance model,certainty is one of the four basic needs.Therefore,when consumers are in a state of self-uncertainty,they will seek other ways to compensate for the lack of certainty in order to keep the meaning intact.(3)Justification moderates the effect of social crowding on consumers' self-gifting.When there is a justification condition for the emergence of high social crowding,consumers will not have a higher willingness to self-gifting(compared with low social crowding).Because,when there is a justification,consumers do not experience dissonance,and then cognitive dissonance will not happen,nor selfuncertainty.Therefore,consumers do not feel the lack of certainty,so they do not need to compensate themselves by self-giving.(4)When consumers saw the advertisement which it's slogan was about self-gifting,the dissonance experience and self-uncertainty of consumers in the high crowded environment can be reduced,and the purchase intention and payment intention of consumers will increase accordingly.Through empirical study,this paper verifies the effect of social crowding on the consumers' willingness of self-gifting and the inner psychological mechanism.Finds new variables "justification" and mediate mechanism "self-uncertainty" that affect consumers' willingness to self-gifting.We also expand the aftereffect variable of previous scholars' research on social crowding and provides a scene research angle for the research on consumers' self-gifting intention.