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This study sets out to examine the causal relationships among consumers' need for uniqueness, brand perceptions, and purchase intention of a US apparel brand among Japanese Generation Y consumers.

A self‐administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 175 students enrolled at two Japanese metropolitan universities. A structural equation model using correlation matrix with maximum likelihood was estimated using LISREL 8.53.

Japanese consumers' need for uniqueness consisted of avoidance of similarity, unpopular choice and creative choice. The consumers' need for uniqueness was negatively related to the perceived quality, whereas the creative choice was positively related to the emotional value in perceptions of the US apparel brand. The perceived quality decreased purchase intention, while the emotional value increased purchase intention.

This study was limited to students at two Japanese metropolitan universities and to one US apparel brand.

Consumer need for uniqueness may be considered when developing merchandising and marketing strategies for the Generation Y consumer cohort in domestic and international markets. A focus on emotional values can be successful in creating and maintaining a brand relationship with the focal consumer market.

Few, if any, studies exist that investigate Japanese Generation Y consumers' need for uniqueness and its relationship to brand perceptions. This study addresses perception of a foreign brand and purchase intention related to consumers' need for uniqueness.

There is a significant growth in the consumption of new luxury fashion brands in developing price-sensitive markets like India. Not only does this growth demonstrate how the “new” luxury brands have become a success, but is also illustrative of the perception and practice of style and status among the middle classes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the consumer’s attitude for buying a branded product entails the need for uniqueness and self-monitoring. It also contends that gender and age moderate the consumer’s attitude.

This study employed a self-monitored survey to collect the data from the customers of new luxury fashion retail brand stores in Chennai, India for empirical validation of the model. Data collected from 394 new luxury brands shoppers were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The need for uniqueness and self-monitoring had significant positive influences on social-adjustive attitude and value-expressive attitude. However, the relationship between self-monitoring and value-expressive attitude was weak when compared to other relationships. Significant differences were seen in the strengths of the relationships between gender and age.

New luxury is significantly different from traditional luxury. Analyses regarding age group, gender and attitude can provide unique understanding related to new luxury trends, especially in a price sensitive and emerging market like India. This would help managers in segmenting the market based on consumer demographics, and devise strategies based on their characteristics to influence their attitudes and other behavioural patterns.

Chinese face refers to reputation, others’ respect or compliance which is gained through self-representation and role-playing. The purpose of this paper is to identify and distinguish the four dimensions of face construct: personal identity-face, family identity-face, friend identity-face and occupational identity-face. Based on this, the authors discuss and investigate the influence of four different face dimensions on a consumer’s need for uniqueness (CNFU).

This research uses a questionnaire survey method and convenience samples. Subjects are students from a university in Wuhan operated directly under the Ministry of Education. A total of 730 questionnaires were distributed mainly in libraries and study rooms. After eliminating invalid questionnaires, 690 questionnaires were obtained. In sum, 44.1 percent research subjects are males, and 59 percent of them are undergraduate samples; 92.5 percent subjects’ monthly disposable consumption was less than 2,000 yuan.

The result shows that the influence paths and directions are different. Specifically, personal identity-face and family identity-face restrain CNFU through promoting interdependent self-construal, and friend identity-face and occupational identity-face facilitate CNFU through enhancing the consumer’s susceptibility to normative influence.

These findings are useful for clarify contemporary Chinese individuality-seeking consumption and conformity consumption behavior, and will shed light on form strategic practices, such as brand positioning and product communication.

Previous research on luxury consumption has focused on conspicuous consumption; however, research on consumers' self-conceptual mechanism in inconspicuous luxury consumption context is scarce. The present study aims to investigate various self-concepts and their mechanisms for inconspicuous and conspicuous luxury consumption.

An experiment with 215 participants from online survey website was conducted, and the hypotheses were tested using PROCESS Macro 3.4.

The study findings are as follows. Materialistic consumers' preference between inconspicuous and conspicuous luxury products is dependent on distinctive self-conceptual mechanism. More specifically, materialistic consumers with independent self-construal prefer inconspicuous luxury brands because of high need for uniqueness, whereas non-materialistic consumers with interdependent self-construal prefer conspicuous luxury products because of high self-monitoring.

The present study uniquely shows conditions (moderated mediation) that the link between need for uniqueness (self-monitoring) and luxury consumption is stronger for those with independent (interdependent) self-construal than for those with interdependent (independent) self-construal. The present results extend and help better understanding of mechanisms and conditions of conspicuous and inconspicuous luxury consumption.

Marketers are advised to design and produce unique vs popular luxury brands depending on consumer's motives and different self-concepts.

This research contributes to extant literature by distinguishing between conspicuous and inconspicuous luxury consumption with two different mechanisms (need for uniqueness and self-monitoring). The present study further demonstrates that the two mechanisms are strongly sustained differently depending on consumer's levels of self-construal.

This study aims to introduce the duration of uniqueness, an important dimension of unique products. It studies how choices between products with long versus short duration of uniqueness are influenced by the interaction between pressure and consumers’ need for uniqueness (NFU).

This research uses a multi-method study approach. A pilot field-study tested the novelty and importance of the research by asking retail professionals to predict the choice of a hypothetical consumer. A retrospective study assessed the importance of duration of uniqueness in unique product choices, by asking consumers about a real and recent unique product purchase. Four additional experimental studies directly tested hypotheses by manipulating pressure and by measuring or manipulating uniqueness motivations.

The pilot field-study showed the novelty and relevance of this research for professionals. Study 1 revealed that, retrospectively, uniqueness duration was considered important for the choice of unique products, by high-NFU consumers under pressure. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that pressure increases the tendency of high-NFU, but not low-NFU, consumers to choose products with long over short uniqueness duration. Study 4 provided initial evidence for the process behind the effect. Study 5 showed that considerations of uniqueness duration when choosing mediated the effects.

The results of the pilot field-study and retrospective study might be affected by recall bias or lay theories. The findings need to be replicated with other sources of pressure and uniqueness. This calls for further research.

Results are important for companies marketing unique products and they suggest that pressure-based marketing appeals can be used strategically to increase sales of products with long uniqueness duration but decrease sales of products with short uniqueness duration. Although the research provides these guidelines, managers should consider the ethical implications of pressure strategies.

This is the first attempt to empirically investigate the duration of uniqueness. Although extant research has examined choices between products with different degrees of uniqueness, this research studies choice of products with similar degrees of uniqueness, but different uniqueness duration. Thus, this research adds to the scarce literature studying the duration of symbolic benefits. Moreover, although pressure and NFU frequently co-exist in uniqueness consumption settings, this study is the first to study their joint effects.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the lifestyles of contemporary Chinese affluent consumers and their influences on a number of consumption variables such as brand preference (local versus foreign), attitudes toward innovative products, luxury consumption, impulse purchases, etc.

Survey data were collected from 1,317 consumers across 17 cities in China. Five lifestyle factors were identified and further verified through a confirmatory factor analysis. Multiple regression analyses were performed to explore the relationships between lifestyles and consumption patterns.

The results showed that affluent Chinese consumers, though apparently similar in terms of wealth possession, exhibited very different patterns in their purchase and consumption behaviors. For instance, consumers with a salient “need‐for‐uniqueness” trait were found to be quite contingent on consuming goods for being distinctive. The price conscious consumers were somehow over‐confident in their purchase decisions, resulting sometimes in impulse buying. A third group of people were found to often disguise their consumption behaviors with an explicit orientation for public interests, e.g. environmental protection. Compared with those who seek respect from others, consumers with strong needs for achievement were found to be more pragmatic and tended to be self‐oriented.

Findings from this study provides a useful framework for marketers to link their products to various lifestyle groups of affluent Chinese consumers, thus enhancing their marketing productivity and profitability in the Chinese market.

Despite the large body of lifestyle studies, very little research has focused on the Asia Pacific region. The current study provides an extensive empirical investigation, on which marketers may better approach affluent Chinese consumers with various lifestyles.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of product description cues as a way to differentiate luxury products for the absolute luxury consumer and the effect of individual traits such as need for uniqueness, product involvement, and product knowledge on consumers’ perceptions of expected price.

An adult sample of 253 female US consumers were recruited for an online survey.

Consumers’ need for uniqueness was related to their level of clothing involvement, which in turn was related to clothing knowledge. Fashion clothing involvement was positively related to participants’ product knowledge which in turn positively influenced participants’ perceived change in expected price of products in response to various product descriptors or cues related to absolute luxury products. In addition, younger consumers were found to be more involved in fashion clothing than older consumers.

This study extends the research into the luxury market and identifies elements of the marketing mix which might be manipulated to better inform potential customers about the luxury product. The study further emphasizes that product descriptors or cues can have an impact on price judgments, especially for highly involved and knowledgeable consumers. This is especially important to academicians as well as marketers since high fashion involved consumers have often been seen as drivers, influential, and legitimists of the fashion adoption process.

To model the relationships between consumer need for uniqueness and attention to social comparison information with fashion opinion leadership and fashion opinion seeking.

A total of 201 US undergraduate students were surveyed and standard scales were used to measure consumer need for uniqueness, attention to social comparison information, fashion opinion leadership, and fashion opinion seeking.

Both consumer need for uniqueness and attention to social comparison information were positively related to fashion opinion leadership. Attention to social comparison information was also positively related to fashion opinion seeking, but consumer need for uniqueness was negatively related to fashion opinion seeking.

The findings are limited to US consumers and the convenience sample. Other limitations include the specific measures used, and the cross‐sectional survey method prevents one from making causal statements. The effects of other, unmeasured variables could not be assessed.

Apparel marketers seeking to encourage opinion leaders to promote their lines of new clothing might devise appeals emphasizing the social significance of the new products and how they bestow uniqueness on their owners. Such appeals might be more effective than those not stressing these psychological motivations. Appeals to consumers more likely to seek than to give opinions might also stress the social significance of the clothing, but appeals to uniqueness might not be effective with these consumers. Perhaps a belongingness appeal would be more effective.

These psychological concepts have not been studied very much in the clothing/fashion product domain. They give new insights into the psychology of clothing opinion leaders and opinion seekers.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the structural relationships between brand consciousness, perceived quality, social influences, traits of vanity, the need for uniqueness (i.e. antecedents), Generation Y purchase intentions and behaviour (consequences) towards luxury fashion goods.

An integrative theoretical model is proposed based on social comparison theory, social impact theory, the perceived quality model and theory of uniqueness to predict the antecedents and consequences of Generation Y luxury fashion goods purchase decisions. Using cross-sectional data, a total of 384 sets of valid questionnaires were collected to perform the statistical analysis for the measurement and structural model using the partial least squares path modelling, a variance-based structural equation modelling technique.

Overall, the structural results imply that the proposed model explains 73.1 and 64 per cent of variances to predict the Generation Y luxury fashion goods purchase decisions. As the several indices for evaluation of goodness of model fit, standardised Root Mean Square Residual, geodesic discrepancy, and unweighted least squares discrepancy show a satisfactory result. The results of two-tailed hypotheses reveal that brand consciousness, perceived quality, social influences, traits of vanity and the need for uniqueness influence Generation Y purchase intention. Moreover, perceived quality and social influences impact purchase behaviour but brand consciousness, traits of vanity and the need for uniqueness do not seem to be significant in explaining the variance in Generation Y purchase behaviour. Furthermore, Generation Y purchase intention is statistically related to purchase behaviour.

There is a lack of empirical evidence and understanding on the influences of consumer purchase intention and behaviour towards luxury fashion goods among the Generation Y. Generation Y is likely to purchase and consume luxury fashion products, and it is important to have a deeper understanding of this market segment.

This study aims to investigate the impacts of service category (utilitarian vs hedonic) on chosen degree of uniqueness (CDOU) and consumers' willingness to pay more (WTPM), as well as the moderating roles of consumers' narcissism trait (high vs low) and processing mode (rational vs experiential) on the relationship between service category and CDOU.

This study conducts one online experiment-questionnaire study and one between-subject lab experiment to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that consumers are more likely to choose unique choices in hedonic service customization. Consumers' CDOU has a positive effect on their attitudes toward WTPM. In addition, consumers' processing mode moderates the relationship between service category and CDOU.

The findings provide new insights into better understanding the factors affecting the choice of service customization and have significant practical implications. First, consumers' different desire for uniqueness of different service should not be neglected when examining the values of service customization. Second, high-level CDOU is quite prevalent for hedonic (vs utilitarian) service customization, especially for consumers with experiential processing mode.

While previous studies state “need for uniqueness” as a key characteristic of product customization in general, we extend it to intangible service customization and connect it with consumers' WTPM. In addition, the moderating role of individual trait and decision-making processing mode is also checked. Thus, the findings refine the existing understanding of the relationship between uniqueness and service customization.