Figure - available from: Psychology and Marketing
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Source publication
As consumers become more aware of and concerned about the environmental impact of their consumption choices, an increasing number of luxury brands are now engaging in sustainability practices. This study examines factors influencing the effectiveness of embedding sustainability in luxury brands. Specifically, the research focus is the effect of chi...
Similar publications
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide effects on child health globally. Increased prevalence of childhood obesity has been observed by a number of countries during the pandemic. The absence of a formal societal lockdown during the pandemic, made Sweden stand out compared to other countries. This study aims to examine changes in BMI among pr...
Citations
... Perceived brand environmental ethics may result in cues of perceived value for luxury consumers (Vanhamme et al., 2023). As a result, some consumers are increasingly desiring sustainable approaches from luxury brands (Kim et al., 2022). Unfortunately, in the luxury markets, customers regard green consumption as more of a social adaptation mechanism for individual purposes, rather than a consumption tendency based on environmental consciousness (Griskevicius et al., 2012). ...
Luxury brands are related to two major mechanisms of social adaptation: value-expressive and social-adjustive. Researchers have established that these two functions are likely to influence customer purchase intention. Additionally, evidence suggests an interaction between sustainability beliefs and personality traits. Traditional, luxury brand purchasers are considered carefree of sustainability considerations. Therefore, a research gap exists regarding sustainable behaviors and personality issues in relation to luxury brands. Thus, building on a model of the effects of the value-expressive and social-adjustive functions of luxury brands on purchase intention, this study analyzes the effects of two types of moderating variables, namely, sustainable consumption (anthropocentrism, perceived self-efficacy, ecological behavior, conservatism, and egoism) and personality traits (conscientiousness, extraversion, openness, and neuroticism). Results of a structural equation modeling analysis with nested models, using a sample of 299 U.S. luxury car consumers, reveal that for the value-expressive and purchase intention relationship, only perceived self-efficacy shows a negative moderating effect. Meanwhile, for the relationship between social-adjustive and purchase intention, anthropocentrism, egoism, extraversion, and neuroticism demonstrate moderating effects. Thus, the variables here proposed primarily moderate the social-adjustive and purchase intention relationship. Therefore, luxury product firms pursuing a long-term sustainability agenda may benefit from strategies based on social-adjustive needs.
... Similar to other fields and sectors, sustainability has also become an issue being discussed in the luxury products context (Birke & Keil, 2021;Giri et al., 2022;Hala et al., 2022;Kim, Park, & Septianto, 2022;Kumar, 2023;Luo et al., 2021;Phau et al., 2022). However, based on the literature, sustainability issues in luxury products are mainly discussed for fashion products. ...
... Based on the literature, the consumption of sustainable luxury products is influenced by the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the respondents. Kim, Park, and Septianto (2022) conducted four experiments on luxury fashion products, which showed the essential role of childhood socioeconomic status in understanding consumer evaluations of sustainable luxury products. The findings also showed that children with high socioeconomic status have lower evaluations and lower preferences towards sustainable luxury products than children from lower socioeconomic status. ...
... The findings also showed that children with high socioeconomic status have lower evaluations and lower preferences towards sustainable luxury products than children from lower socioeconomic status. Kim, Park, and Septianto (2022) also suggested that cooperation in the community is essential to enforce prosocial behavior to consume sustainable luxury products. However, when consumers from high socioeconomic status were exposed to the high treatment conditions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, they had similar preferences to those of low socioeconomic status toward sustainable luxury products. ...
This study analyzes the literature available on consumer luxury consumption and the marketing of luxury products during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The Scopus database was utilized to search for research on luxury products during the pandemic. The study followed the SPAR‐4‐SLR procedure, with 59 articles analyzed using VOSviewer to provide network and density visualization. Triangulation of analysis was conducted using NVivo as the software offers rigor in the systematic literature review. The VOSviewer network and density visualization show that the analysis of the luxury industry literature can be elucidated by sectors and themes. The results indicate that the majority of the literature on luxury discussed hospitality, especially the hotel setting, followed by luxury fashion and tourism. Many sectors, such as luxury automotive, beauty, arts, and so forth were overlooked. Online landscape, branding, social responsibility, communication, sustainability, the self, and culture are the dominant themes in literature. The study sheds light on important themes, sectors, and research gaps, benefiting academic scholars and industry practitioners in understanding and navigating the challenges and opportunities in the luxury market during crises.
... From our point of view, the commitment of companies to generating innovations that favor sustainability can be a catalyst for taking advantage of cultural changes that revalue sustainability, especially with regard to the consumer experience after the COVID-19 pandemic. The recent changes in consumer mentality, with an increasing commitment to social and environmental issues, are postulated as an indicator of pressure for organizations that try to respond to these demands at different levels (Andersson et al., 2022;Kim et al., 2022;Salciuviene et al., 2022). ...
Sustainability‐oriented innovation in services has recently been raising interest among academics and professionals. The present research has a dual objective. The first is to develop a scale that captures the notion of sustainability‐oriented innovation in retailing (SOI‐r) from the consumer's perspective. A sequential process is carried out to purge and retain 17 items which synergistically measure SOI‐r. We use quantitative research, adopting an exploratory‐descriptive approach on a total sample of 510 customers of commercial food establishments. The principal axis factor analysis shows six factors: product innovation, marketing innovation, relational innovation, economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability. The second objective is to develop an index using importance‐performance map analysis, which allows analysis of the level of development of the six dimensions identified in SOI‐r and areas for their improvement. The results are compared across food retail formats (hypermarkets, supermarkets, and discount stores) and recommendations are made at a strategic level.
... Socioeconomic status influences consumption decisions (Shavitt et al., 2016), including decisions on sustainable consumption (Yan et al., 2021) and fashion consumption (Simmel, 1957). Kim et al. (2022) found that consumers with a low (vs. high) childhood socioeconomic status reported more favorable evaluations of sustainable luxury brands because they valued communal cooperation. ...
... Because socioeconomic status is a crucial and measurable segmentation variable(Coleman, 1983), our findings offer insights into the (mis)alignment between a minimalist brand's positioning and the interests of consumers with different socioeconomic status.Second, our findings extend research on the relationship between socioeconomic status and sustainable consumption. Previous studies argued that consumers with lower childhood socioeconomic status had more favorable evaluations of sustainable luxury brands because they tended to value cooperation(Kim et al., 2022). While minimalist brands are often perceived as sustainable, we found that consumers with lower socioeconomic status reported less favorable evaluations of minimalist brands because they tended to value consumption quantity over quality. ...
Minimalism, which encourages people to live with fewer possessions, is an emerging theme in marketing communication that often appeals to the sustainable ideal of reducing consumption and waste (e.g., Patagonia's “Buy less” campaign). However, consumers' responses to this marketing approach remain under‐researched. We investigate whether consumers' responses to minimalist appeals depend on their socioeconomic status. We find that consumers with lower socioeconomic status report less favorable evaluations of brands that adopt minimalist appeals, because these consumers tend to prefer quantity over quality in daily consumption—a preference that is incongruent with minimalism. This effect is moderated by the considerations of product‐usage frequency: even consumers with low socioeconomic status can become more favorable toward minimalist brands if the benefit of minimalism, namely the increased usage of each product, is salient.
... Traditional views considered luxury and environmental sustainability to be contradictory and incompatible concepts (J. Kim et al., 2020). For instance, Cristini et al. (2017, p. 105) stated that "a concern is that luxury may-despite the seemingly sustainable steps changing the mental models-not be sustainable economically or environmentally after all." ...
Many service and retail facilities, such as hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and airports, are incorporating nature elements into their building design. Individuals' affinity for nature is called biophilia. The literature on biophilic design heavily focuses on the restorative effects of biophilic design on the facility users, leaving many other effects under‐investigated. In particular, biophilic design implementation requires significant financial investment, thus, whether biophilic design can bring financial returns from consumers would be of interest to practitioners. This study investigates whether biophilic design attributes are linked to consumers’ willingness to pay a price premium (WTPP). Two pretests show that when biophilic attributes are moderately implemented, they can elevate aesthetic and attractiveness perceptions, but this effect tapers off if the implementation is excessive. Through three between‐subjects main experiments, this study confirms that WTPP is enhanced via increased aesthetic value and luxury perceptions when biophilic attributes are present (vs. absent—Studies 1 and 2), but this serial mediation is moderated by biophilic scarcity (low vs. high—Study 3). An adequate level of nature elements, when implemented in biophilic‐scarce areas, can improve customers' perceptions of aesthetic value and luxury. This, in turn, improves customers' WTPP for the service.
... Previous research indicated that poverty or scarcity could impede human cognitive function [9], capturing attention with high resource demand and less susceptibility to other contexts [10]. Poverty could also play an important role in the decision-making area [1,8,[11][12][13], such as marketing and purchase intention [4,6,14], sustainable choices [15,16], risk-taking [17], reproductive health [18], and loans [12]. ...
Scarcity goods have generally been perceived as high in value in real-world and empirical studies. However, few studies have investigated this value over time, such as performance in intertemporal decision making. This study’s chief objective was to determine how scarcity evaluation changes temporally. We used the electroencephalogram technique and an outcome evaluation task with the valuation of scarcity and ordinary rewards delivered at different times to explore the effect of scarcity on delay discounting. The feedback-related negativity (FRN) results show that ordinary goods were associated with a more negative amplitude than scarcity goods, and that rewards delivered in the future evoked more negative deflection compared to those delivered immediately. The prominent FRN effect was derived mainly from ordinary trials rather than scarcity trials in the immediate condition and in the future rather than only in the immediate condition. The Frontal Asymmetry Index (FAI) results show that the scarcity condition was associated with greater relative left frontal cortical activity than the ordinary condition when delivered immediately. The frontal asymmetry indicated greater approach motivation. Our electrophysiology data indicate that scarcity goods have a perceived high value, particularly when delivered immediately.
... Childhood SES (hereafter) reflects the availability of resources in one's early life stage (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002). A growing body of research has documented that one's childhood SES affects many aspects of later lives ranging from cognitive adaptations (Mittal et al., 2015), health (Chen, 2004), impulsivity (Mittal & Griskevicius, 2014), to decision-making such as risk-taking choices (Amir et al., 2018), preference for the scarce option , or preference for sustainable luxury brands (Kim, Park & Septianto, 2022). Because childhood SES can program individuals to follow certain decision strategies over time (Ellis et al., 2009), the internalized strategies shaped early in life can determine decisionmaking and behavioral patterns in adulthood (Amir et al., 2018). ...
... Therefore, minimizing negative costs could be critical, especially for those with lower childhood SES. Consistently, research shows that compared with individuals who grew up with affluent resources, individuals who grew up with scarce resources are more likely to avoid extreme options and complex, unfamiliar logos as an attempt to minimize uncertainty and possible losses (Kim, Park & Septianto, 2022). ...
The sunk‐cost fallacy is a well‐documented cognitive bias in the decision‐making literature. Although the emerging literature on childhood socioeconomic status suggests that early‐life environments shape individuals' decision strategies and have a long‐lasting impact on their decisions, little is known about the impact of childhood socioeconomic status on the sunk‐cost fallacy. Using two different scenarios and an actual choice task, we provide converging evidence that individuals who grew up in resource‐scarce environments (those with lower childhood socioeconomic status) are reluctant to abandon inferior choices merely because they have already invested substantial resources in them, resulting in the sunk‐cost fallacy. This fallacy occurs because individuals with lower childhood socioeconomic status tend to perceive the loss of their prior investments as more wasteful than those with higher childhood socioeconomic status.
... Our findings are limited to leisure physical activity. Zimmermann and Chakravarti (2022) Lastly, consumers' pursuit of sustainable consumption would depend on a lot of factors other than physical activity, such as their socioeconomic status (Kim et al., 2022), narcissism and faith in humanity (Bowen et al., 2022), generational cohort (Casalegno et al., 2022), and mindfulness (Kaur & Luchs, 2021). The integration of such consumer-related factors that shape sustainable consumption along with physical activity should be pursued by future research. ...
What would make the “elusive” green consumer actually choose sustainable products? This research draws from “dopamine hypothesis of reward” to demonstrate that physical activity/exercise (regular and immediate) is a vital factor in determining consumers' sustainable behaviors. More specifically, it examines the role of physical activity/exercise on sustainable consumption behaviors as well as the role of emotional intelligence and sustainability claims. Five studies were conducted to test the hypothesized relationships. The findings from Study 1a and 1b establish direct causal link between physical activity/exercise and customers' sustainable consumption behaviors. Studies 2a and 2b show that emotional intelligence (trait‐based and ability‐based) may explain the effect of physical activity/exercise (regular and immediate) on sustainable consumption behaviors. Finally, the findings from Study 3 demonstrate that sustainability claims moderate the effect of emotional intelligence on sustainable consumption behaviors. These findings offer significant implications for retailers and marketers to use physical activity/exercise as a strategic intervention to positively influence consumers' evaluation and behaviors toward sustainable products.
... Overall, luxury and sustainability are seen as incompatible (Dekhili et al., 2019;Sipila et al., 2020): luxury brands marketed as sustainable suffer from a lower brand attitude and decreased perceptions of luxury (Janssen et al., 2014;Kim et al., 2020). ...
The existential need for more sustainable production and consumption has attracted substantial scholarly interest, which has focused on the positive outcomes of corporate sustainability. Negative side‐effects have been largely neglected. This study contributes (1) by synthesizing past research into such negative side‐effects from a diverse set of business disciplines; (2) by conceptualizing—for the first time—unintended negative side‐effects of product and service sustainability; and (3) by developing a research agenda guiding researchers in addressing the most important knowledge gaps. The synthesis of 94 articles identifies three main cognitive mechanisms (information elaboration, product perception bias, and self‐perception) and several emotionally aversive states (anxiety, shame, guilt, regret, distress, reduced enjoyment, frustration, discomfort, stress, and embarrassment) that are responsible for unintended negative side‐effects resulting from product and service sustainability. Immediate managerial implications from this study include the critical importance of simple corporate sustainable communication that does not require consumers to dedicate substantial cognitive resources. Important future research directions include the investigation of the effects of green hushing and the development and testing of practical ways to help companies to avoid the sustainability liability trap, which leads to reduced demand because of sustainable features of products or services.
