This paper aims to contribute to the existing literature about social influence on products purchase intention. Specifically, it focuses on social influence among young adults’ purchase intention for luxury products, through investigation about Macau young adults consumption culture. Three types of social influence (informational influence, utilitarian influence, and value-expressive influence) are examined in this study. In terms of product conspicuousness, two types of luxury products can be identified based on the degree to which products usage is performed in public versus private. Hypotheses include that informational influence, utilitarian influence, and value-expressive influence will be significantly and positively related to consumer purchase intention for luxury products, both publicly and privately consumed. A convenient sample of 120 Macau young adults aged 18 to 24 participated in this study. The result of Regression and Analysis of Variance indicated that consumers have been affected by different types of social influence when they purchase different types of luxury products. Value-expressive influence is significantly and positively related to purchase intention for public products. Moreover, both informational influence and value-expressive influence are significantly and positively related to purchase intention for private luxury products. However, the effects of utilitarian influence are insignificant to both public and private luxury products, which are contrary to the hypotheses specified in this study and surprising findings about contemporary Chinese culture. Additionally, female has higher intention to buy luxury products. Based on the results of this study, marketing implications and managerial insights in the luxury retail market are recommended accordingly. Future research can provide a more comprehensive perspective of social influence than the exploratory one offered in the present study.

This paper investigates how promotions of knowledge and social embeddness shape consumers’ participation in sustainable consumption. An extended model of goal-directed behaviour is tested under airline consumers who have participated in voluntary carbon offset (VCO) program. Results show consumer’s knowledge positively influences their subjective norm but not their attitude towards participation of VCO. Increasing consumers’ sense of social embeddedness is also found to be crucial in forming subjective norm and their attitude. Finally, positive anticipated emotion influences consumers’ desire to participate in VCO, while negative anticipated emotion did not. The findings of this research reveal how interactive promotions influence individual’s internal processes for sustainable consumption, as well as highlight the need for different emotional elicitation strategies for different sustainability programs.

Current study focused on investigating the effects of the self-dissociation as a thought in which consumers dis-identify or dissociate with the threatened in-group and the escapism as a tendency of consumers’ distracting themselves and avoiding their thoughts about the in-group under severe but adoptable criticism by turning their attention elsewhere on across-domain compensatory consumption intention. And It explored not only the positive roles of undesirability thought against the in-group in consumers’ forming the self-dissociation and the escapism, but also the effects of negative emotion to the in-group felt at the place of being exposed to the criticism against the in-group on the escapism. Research design, data, and methodology: The experiment was performed with the in-group-threatening single factor within-subject design. Questionnaire data were collected from 196 undergraduate students, and the data were used to testing research hypotheses by structural equation model of Amos 21.0. Results: First, both the self-dissociation of consumers’ dis-identifying with the in-group criticized severely by others and the escapism of their deliberately directing their thoughts and distracting their attention away from thinking the in-group positively influenced on the across-domain compensatory consumption intention. Second, the negative emotion positively influenced on the escapism. Third, the undesirability thought to the in-group under the severe criticism positively effected on the self-dissociation as well as the escapism. Putting in the nutshell, the findings of this study are consistent with the idea that consumers can overcome the negative selfdiscrepancy on one dimension of their social identity by distracting themselves and avoiding thinking about the threatened in-group to find meaning on another dimension which might lead them to the place of doing the across-domain compensatory consumption. Conclusions - Focusing on the results of this study, checking which aspects of consumers’ social identity are linked to products or brands is at issue to marketers when the consumers are faced with the criticism against the in-group. The marketers should build the messages about their products or brand not related to the checked aspects, and communicate the messages, to lead the consumers to the place of doing the across-domain compensatory consumption by their products or brands.

본 연구는 더바디샵의 국내진출 이후에 등장 한 국내의 자연주의 화장품 브랜드들의 이타주의적 사회공헌 활동이 소비자들로부터 어떻게 인식되어지며, 소비자들로부터 공감을 얻어내고 있는지를 알고자 하였다. 이를 위해서 이타주의적 소비자의 사회적 표출적 욕구와 상호작용하기 위한 국내 자연주의 화장품 브랜드들의 커뮤니케이션 전략을 살펴보고, 또한 각 브랜드의 이미지와 메시지에서 어떠한 이타주의적 가치관을 표방하고 있는지를 알아보았다. 이를 통해서 사회표출적이고 윤리적 브랜드는 이타주의적 소비자들로부터 긍정적으로 인식되고, 얻어진 소비자의 공감은 소비행위라는 상호작용을 통해서 이루어질 것으로 가정을 하였다. 연구방법은 국내 대표적인 자연주의 화장품 브랜드 4개 [더바디샵], [네츄럴리퍼블릭], [더페이스샵], [이니스프리]를 선정하여 소비자들로 하여금 각 브랜드의 정보와 이미지에 대한 사회적 표출로서의 기능에 대한 인식과 수단으로써 구매태도를 가지는지를 평가하도록 하였다. 연구 결과 이타적 소비자들은 소비라는 행위를 통해서 자신의 가치관을 사회적으로 표출하고 있었으며, 집단주의적 가치를 지닌 소비자는 사회공헌적인 브랜드 이미지와 메시지에 대해서 높은 호감과 구매의도를 가지고 있었다. 하지만 실제로 소비자들은 사회공헌적인 브랜드의 상품이라고 할지라도 구매에 있어서 추가비용까지를 지불하려는 의사는 그리 높지 않았다. 따라서 국내의 소비자들은 사회공헌적 브랜드의 활동은 지지하지만 아직 추가 비용까지를 지불할 의사는 낮다는 소극성이 보여 진다.