Research On The Influence Of Social Exclusion On Compensatory Consumption Of Social Relations

Traditional research findings suggest that individuals are motivated to consume from their need for a product or service.In reality,however,many consumption behaviors are no longer based on objective needs,but on subjective needs,such as psychological damage,self-perception deviation,etc.In this case,the consumption behavior is to make up for the psychological deficiency or to stabilize the self,which is what we call compensatory consumption.Why is there a psychological deficit or self-perception imbalance? In today’s rapidly evolving information age and increasingly convenient social connections,people are more likely to feel rejection from the Internet or from others in reality.This rejection leads to people not being able to integrate well into social groups or establish good social relationships with others,which leads to people’s psychological needs or self-perception being threatened,and consumption is one of the common ways people cope with this threat.More useful results on the impact of social exclusion on compensatory consumption have been produced abroad.However,there is a relative lack of research on the impact of social exclusion on the compensatory consumption of social relations.This study takes this as an entry point to explore the effects of social exclusion on compensatory consumption of social relationships,and the mediating role of the need to belong and the moderating role of self-construal,in order to provide a theoretical basis for companies to implement effective marketing management practices and promote consumer interaction with compensatory products.Firstly,this paper reviews the relevant studies on social exclusion,compensatory consumption,the need for belonging and self-construal at home and abroad,as well as the theoretical foundations of Temporal Need-Threat Model,the theory of compensatory consumption and construal level theory,and puts forward the research hypothesis and constructs the theoretical model in this paper.Secondly,the product was pre-tested by selecting a compensatory product for social relations based on the context of the study,which was distributed through an online platform.The empirical results show that the selection of products with compensatory social relations.Again,a formal questionnaire was designed by selecting the mature scale according to the research context and making appropriate modifications,and the questionnaire was distributed through the online platform,and 242 valid questionnaires were obtained.The data were subjected to descriptive statistics and correlation analysis,reliability and validity tests,common method deviation tests using SPSS 23.0 software,and finally hypothesis testing using the PROCESS v4.1 plug-in in SPSS 23.0.The empirical results show that: First,social exclusion increases the willingness to purchase and the price of socially compensatory products.Second,social exclusion threatens consumers’ psychological needs and stimulates consumers’ need to belong,thus positively influencing the consumption of socially compensatory products by increasing the willingness to purchase and the level of bids for socially compensatory products.Third,self-construal moderates the effect of social exclusion on the need to belong.Specifically,the interdependent self-concept positively regulates the effect of social exclusion on the need to belong,while the independent self-concept negatively regulates the effect of social exclusion on the need to belong.Fourth,self-construal’s regulate the impact of social exclusion on the compensatory consumption of social relations.Specifically,the interdependent self-concept positively regulates the effect of social exclusion on the willingness to purchase and the level of price offered for compensatory social relations products,and the independent self-concept negatively regulates the effect of social exclusion on the willingness to purchase and the level of price offered for compensatory social relations products.Finally,the article summarizes the findings and theoretical implications of the study,and proposes management recommendations based on the findings: First,companies should pay attention to the correlation mechanism between social exclusion and compensatory consumption.Second,companies should focus on exploring the compensatory attributes of social relations of their products.Third,companies should pay attention to the psychosocial state of consumers.Fourth,companies should adopt differentiated marketing strategies based on the differences and orientations of consumers’ personality traits.