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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of interdependent vs independent self-construal on service satisfaction, following the observation of failure and recovery experienced by a fellow customer.

Three experiments were conducted to test the research hypotheses.

After service failure, interdependent observers react less favorably compared to independent observers. After high recovery compensation, interdependent observers react more favorably compared to independent observers. The effects are driven by differences in perceived interactional and distributive justice.

This study uses three scenario-based experiments to test the hypotheses. While providing greater control of the experimental conditions, the external validity of the results is to some extent sacrificed. Moreover, this research does not investigate observers’ reactions to the interactional aspect of recovery.

When handling service failure, firms are required to anticipate and address not only the responses of the target customers involved but also those of potential observers. Providers can accordingly use available customer information to gauge customers’ likely self-construal and to adjust their service delivery and recovery tactics. Providers can influence observing customers’ reactions by creating a servicescape that activates a desired self-construal.

This research is one of a few to examine the effect of service failure and recovery on observing customers, and the first to do so via the lens of self-construal. It contributes to the literature on service failure and recovery and the literature on self-construal and has practical implications for service providers. The value of this research is further highlighted given the increasingly public nature of services and the multicultural context of service delivery.

This paper aims to examine how exposure to sexual images activates the urge to yield to temptation in a subsequent unrelated context.

In Study 1, this paper uses empirical data based on an automobile expo to examine the correlational relationship between sexual imagery and indulgence. In Studies 2 and 3, this study examines the moderating effects of self-construal and gender differences on indulgent consumption, with different dependent measures. Study 4 distinguishes the sexual images into gratuitous sex and romantic love and tests the mediating role of sensation seeking.

For men, an independent self-construal increases indulgent consumption. In contrast, an interdependent self-construal facilitates women’s indulgent consumption. Having an interdependent self-construal has the opposite impact on indulgent consumption for the two genders: sexual images of romantic love attenuate the effect on men but boost the effect on women. Perceived sensation-seeking serves as the underlying mechanism.

This paper contributes to the literature on sex, reward-processing, context effects in marketing and indulgent consumption.

Advertisers, retailers, food courts and restaurants may use sexual imagery to promote more indulgent consumption with gender and self-construal as segmentation variables. Public policymakers and other concerned parties should also raise consumers’ awareness of the priming effect found in this research.

This research advances the literature on sex by demonstrating the priming effects of sexual imagery and further considers the simultaneous impacts of gender and self-construal on consumers’ subsequent indulgent consumption.

This study examines how consumers' self-construal moderates consumers' buying behavior in situations requiring consumers to buy larger-than-expected clothing sizes. The authors explore the potential effectiveness of two distinct communication strategies – emotional versus informational ad appeals – to mitigate the negative effects of sizing discrepancies.

A total of three experiments were conducted to examine the proposed framework. Studies 1 and 2 investigate whether self-construal moderates the relationship between sizing discrepancy and purchasing intentions. Study 3 examines the effectiveness of communication strategies in reducing the detrimental effects of sizing discrepancy.

When encountering sizing discrepancies, the authors find that consumers with an interdependent self-construal have lower purchase intentions than those with an independent self-construal. The authors demonstrate that an emotional communication strategy is more effective for consumers with an interdependent self-construal, whereas an informational communication strategy is more effective for consumers with an independent self-construal.

With the lack of a universal sizing system, consumers often struggle to find clothes that fit as expected. However, extant research has not explored cross-cultural differences in how consumers respond to sizing discrepancies and how managers can reduce any potential negative effects.

This study aims to investigate the simultaneous impact of religion and modernity on attitude toward luxury consumption in Qatar, with emphasis on the mediating effect of self-construal. The authors propose the idea that self-construal is a significant mediator through which religion and modernity influence attitude toward luxury consumption.

The data for this study are sourced from a survey of 190 Qatari respondents. The conceptual model is estimated using both the covariance-based and the partial least squares structural equation modeling techniques for the purpose of robustness check.

The results indicate that religion has a positive and significant association with both independent and interdependent self-construal. The impact of modernity on independent self-construal is positive and significant, while its effect on interdependent self-construal is not significant, implying that modernity has no impact on individuals’ interdependence in the Gulf communities. Moreover, the results reveal that self-construal significantly mediates the effect of both religiosity and modernity on luxury consumption attitude, as expected.

The originality of this article lies in investigating the impact of religion and modernity on attitude toward luxury consumption through the self-construal paradigm. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study examining the simultaneous impact of religion and modernity in a Muslim community, from a self-construal perspective. Second, unlike the prior studies, this paper addresses the issue of non-normality in the data using the maximum likelihood robust estimator.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between self‐construals and decision‐making styles of Korean college students.

A total of 872 Korean college students from three different Korean university campuses completed three‐part questionnaires (self‐construal, decision making styles and demographic information).

It was found that Korean college students' decision‐making styles can vary according to their self‐construals.

Although data were collected from three different universities located in different geographic locations, the study was conducted using a convenience sample rather than a random sample. Therefore, a randomly selected, diverse and geographical sampling is recommended to be able to generalize results from such a study to the total Korean college student population.

Findings suggest that high‐end luxury imported goods might appeal to Korean college students with Independent self‐construals. Even though there is an emerging new group of students with an independent self‐construal, the majority of Korean college students still hold a higher interdependent self‐construal than independent self‐construal. Therefore, different marketing strategies should be developed according to the different market segments among the Korean college students based on the different clothing product categories and quality.

Despite the growing global market and importance of studying cultural differences, little information about the influence of culture on consumer behaviour is available. The findings of the dual‐self concept within the Korean culture and their close relationship with decision‐making styles contribute to the theoretical knowledge base of contemporary consumer behaviour.

During these unprecedented times, acts of charity are deemed essential to help individuals in need and support the social safety net. Given the importance of prosocial behavior for survival through the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak, the authors investigate the effects of partitioning experiential consumption and self-construal on consumer responses.

Based on the literature on partitioning and self-construal, the findings across three experimental studies provide novel insights into the interplay between partitioning and self-construal, and offer psychological processes on prosocial and behavioral intention.

Individuals with predominantly independent (vs. interdependent) self-construals and those primed with independent (vs. interdependent) self-construals showed higher prosocial intention when the experiential product ad was in an aggregated (vs. partitioned) format. The fit between the type of format and self-construal leads to the high control coping mechanism, and ultimately prosocial intention.

Partitioning experiential consumption has not been directly examined using self-construal, providing novel insights into consumer reactions during the pandemic. This paper provides practical implications to practitioners and researchers to better understand and adapt to shifting digital consumption patterns.

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.

The ethics literature has focused on the influence of self-construal dimensions on unethical decision-making. However, the literature is unclear about why these self-construal dimensions (Independent-self, Relational-self, Collective-self) impact differently on unethical decision-making. Based on the theory of cooperation and competition, this study empirically examines the mediating role of competitive orientation and addresses the theoretically unexplained question of why self-construal dimensions influence differently on unethical decision-making.

Based on the deductive approach, a quantitative research study was conducted on the Sri Lankan banking industry because there have been many instances of unethical behavior reported in this sector lately. Data were collected from 305 bank branch managers using a structured survey questionnaire.

The findings revealed that competitive orientation mediates the self-construal dimensions and explained that competitive orientation is one reason why independent-self, relational-self and collective-self influence differently on unethical decision-making.

This paper addresses the unanswered question of why self-construal dimensions relate to unethical decision-making differently.

This study aims to examine the effect of self-construal on solo dining intentions and its underlying mechanism through consumer emotions. Furthermore, the study also investigates the moderating effect of the composition of other diners on the relationship between self-construal and solo dining intentions.

A 2 (self-construal: independent vs interdependent) × 2 (other diners: solo diners vs social diners) between-subjects experimental design was adopted to test the hypotheses. The data were collected from 317 Chinese consumers, followed by an analysis using IBM SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 23.0.

The findings indicate that consumers with an independent self-construal are more likely to have the intention to dine alone at a restaurant. Nevertheless, this effect is contingent upon the composition of other diners. The effect is significant only when nearby diners are social diners, and perceived enjoyment partly mediates the relationship. Conversely, when nearby diners are also solo diners, consumers' self-construals do not significantly affect their solo dining intentions. Moreover, the results indicate that consumers generally experience low levels of perceived stress when dining alone.

This study incorporates individual personality traits into research on solo diners and highlights the crucial role of positive emotions in solo dining, which provides insights for relevant enterprises to develop effective marketing strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating role of psychological empowerment and the moderating role of self-construal (independent and interdependent) on the relationship between transformational leadership and employees’ innovative work behavior (IWB).

A total of 639 followers and 87 leaders filled out questionnaires from cross-industry sample of five most innovative companies of China. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the relations.

Results revealed that psychological empowerment mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and IWB. The research established that transformational leadership positively influences IWB which includes idea generation as well as idea implementation. The results also showed that the relationship between transformational leadership and IWB was stronger among employees with a higher interdependent self-construal and a lower independent self-construal.

This study adds to IWB literature by empirically testing the moderating role of self-construal and the mediating role of psychological empowerment on transformational leadership-IWB link.