From the past to the present, we are living in an age of social comparison. Above all, upward social comparison to those who are superior in terms of their social and economic status makes individuals feel psychologically deficient and threatened. As a result, individuals oftentimes exhibit compensatory consumption to relieve their unfulfilled desires such as stress, disappointment, and self-esteem deficiency by purchasing high-end products or brands (Mandel, Petrova, & Cialdini, 2006; Pettit & Sivanathan, 2011).

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.

Purpose - This paper aims at exploring the effects of failure types such as failure in promotion orientation and failure in prevention orientation on consumers' consumption behavior, and the moderation role of lay theories in the effects. Research design, data, and methodology – This study employed 2 between-subject designs(failure in promotion orientation vs. failure in prevention orientation) and also 2 (failure in promotion orientation vs. failure in prevention orientation) with implicit self as the within-subject. Chinese consumers participated in the empirical study, and to verify the hypotheses ANOVA, T-test and regression analysis were used. Results – Consumers were more likely to choose adaptive consumption behavior rather than compensatory consumption behavior when they were encountered with failure in promotion orientation versus failure in prevention orientation. Lay theories did play the moderation role in the effect of failure types on consumption behavior. The incremental theorists who think that effort is an important way to accomplish their learning goals showed more willingness to conduct compensatory consumption behavior rather than adaptive consumption behavior. Conclusions – Marketers should put more attention on the ways by which their products can help consumers self-improve when consumers encounter with failure. They should also be aware of the importance of consumers' mindsets when designing and developing advertising messages.