Motivated Happiness in Luxury Consumption

• Main Authors: Lai, Edward Yuhang, Pandelaere, Mario
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Consumer behavior; Consumption; Happiness; Luxuries
• ISSN: 0098-9258

Where luxury was limited to an exclusive group before, "affordable luxury" is now available for a large group of consumers. However, this expansion of the notion of luxury introduces a clear hierarchy within a brand. Research has shown that people are motivated to avoid being at the last place in general. This "last-place aversion" (Kuziemko et al. 2014) raises a question regarding bottomtier luxury consumption. How can consumers who buy the lowest tier of a luxury brand nevertheless be happy with their purchase? Drawing on literatures from assimilation and contrast (Mussweiler, Rüter, and Epstude 2004), and motivated reasoning (Ziva Kunda 1990), we suggest that consumers at different positions within a brand hierarchy relate their purchase differently to the brand. Consumers buying the lowest-tier luxury are motivated to view the brand as homogeneous, which allows them to view the product they own to represent the brand equally well as other products higher in the hierarchy. Consumers buying the top-tier luxury, in contrast, are motivated to view the brand as heterogeneous and see their product as very different from lower-tier options. In addition, these perceptions drive consumers' satisfaction with their purchase. While lower-tier consumers are happier when they see their product as similar to other options, higher-tier consumer are happier when they see their product as different from others. We test these ideas through five experiments. In Study 1, participants imagined owning a Mercedes-Benz S-class (the top-tier), a C-class (the bottom-tier), or an A-class (lower than C-class) that would be introduced to the US market. Participants indicated how different this new A-class would be from other Mercedes cars. Participants viewed it as less different if they imagined owning a C-class than an S-class. Even though both groups made a downward comparison, the group at the lower end ended up seeing the brand as more homogeneous, as expected. In Study 2, we again had participants imaging owning either an S- or C-class Mercedes. In addition, half of the participants were told about the introduction of a lower-tier A-class while the other half were not. For the A-class condition, participants evaluated how different the A-class car was to the other cars while for the no A-class condition, participants evaluated how different their own car was. Regardless of the introduction of A-class, participants at the bottomtier perceived fewer differences than those at th