Purpose - Current study aimed at investigating the symbolic and evaluation relevance to global luxury brands as the causes of inducing social identity verification, and also explored whether the social identity verification will affect the attitude toward the brands.
Research design, data, and methodology - 323 questionaries from Chinese consumers were used to test hypotheses by structural equation model of AMOS 22.0.
Results - First, social identity verification positively affected on the brand attitude. Second, both the symbolic relevance and the evaluation relevance positively affected on social identity verification. Third, the mediation roles of social identity verification were identified. Social identity verification played a full mediation role in the effect of the symbolic relevance on the brand attitude, and played a partial mediation role in the effect of the evaluation relevance on the brand attitude.
Conclusions - This study could contribute to the advancement of theory concerned with the roles of consumers’ social identity verification which induces positive attitude toward the global luxury brands. Global brand managers in China should try to search ways by which consumers can feel both the symbolic relevance and evaluation relevance to their luxury brands, and should make efforts to improve the symbolic relevance and evaluation relevance to their brand.