The Research of Status’s Influence on Consumers’ Self-Brand Connection with Luxury Brands: Moderating Role of Self-Esteem and Vanity*

摘要

With the rapid development of social economy and the improvement of living quality, consumers are inclined to demonstrate their social status by using luxury brands today. This research explores the influence that the status of consumers makes on their self-brand connection with luxury brands, as well as the regulating effect of self-esteem and vanity from the perspective of Chinese cultural background. The analysis of the data shows that: in traditional Chinese cultural background, the higher the status of the consumer is, the higher the comsumer’s self-brand connection with luxury brands is, and vice verse. Self-esteem and vanity have a regulating effect on this relationship. When consumers’ self-esteem level is low, if their status is lower too, then their self-brand connection with luxury brands is higher than that of the high status; and when consumers’ self-esteem level is high, the result is opposite. The level of consumers’ social status has no significant effect on their self-brand connection with luxury brands when they are in low vanity, while to highly peacockish consumers, the self-brand connection with luxury brands of those with low status is significantly lower than that of the high status. We also have discussed the results and given the marketing proposal in the end.