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The purposes of this qualitative study are to investigate brand embarrassment which is a unique social consumption emotion and to identify possible antecedents, consequences and moderating factors associated with it.

The study reviewed a large volume of literature on embarrassment. The literature review was followed by a series of semi-structured, in-depth interviews of selected brand-conscious young adult informants in India. The data collected through such interviews were coded following grounded theory method.

The final outcome of the study is a comprehensive grounded theory framework. The framework depicts various antecedents and consequences of brand embarrassment and specific moderating factors shaping the influences of specific antecedents on brand embarrassment.

The value of this qualitative study lies in developing an elaborate grounded theory framework showing the inter-relationships between brand embarrassment and other related concepts.

This study aims to examine whether counterfeit luxury buyers’ tendency to impress others overrides their anticipation of embarrassment or whether the anticipation of embarrassment delimits their self-presentational goals.

This paper is based on three studies – a survey and two experiments that test the predictions. This study adopts a mix of moderation and mediation analyses to test the proposed hypotheses.

The findings reveal a greater counterfeit purchase likelihood and embarrassment aversion among publicly (vs privately) self-conscious consumers. Furthermore, a higher (vs a lower) audience class and a conspicuous (vs an inconspicuous) brand lead to lower counterfeit purchase intention, and anticipated embarrassment mediates both these effects. To mitigate the threat of embarrassment, publicly self-conscious consumers are more likely to buy counterfeits among a higher-class audience when the brand is inconspicuous (vs conspicuous). They, however, are indifferent to brand conspicuousness among a lower-class audience.

To deter counterfeit consumption, anti-counterfeiting campaigns must invoke consumers’ tendency to overestimate the degree of public attention. Ad appeals must accentuate the anticipation of embarrassment by enhancing self-consciousness through a higher-class audience involving a conspicuous brand.

This paper makes a novel contribution to counterfeiting literature by demonstrating that counterfeit luxury consumption is driven by countervailing motives of gaining approval and avoiding disapproval. The paper departs from mainstream theorizing by demonstrating that counterfeit luxury buyers engage in a protective self-presentation style by choosing inconspicuous counterfeits.

This study aims to examine the role of face consciousness, materialism and risk of embarrassment in determining consumer purchase intention toward counterfeit luxury brand. In addition, the authors explore boundary conditions of these relationships.

Study 1, a survey research (N = 321), examines the mediating role of risk of embarrassment between face consciousness on the purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits. Study 2 (N = 345), an experimental study, examines the moderating role of brand prominence of counterfeit (i.e. whether it contains prominent brand signals). Study 3 (N = 315) explores how the above-mentioned relationships are moderated by consumers’ moral rationalization (i.e. whether consumers seek rationalization when behaving unethically).

First, this research shows that risk of embarrassment mediates the negative relationship between face consciousness and Chinese consumers’ purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits, whereas this relationship was not found between materialism and counterfeit purchase intentions. Second, this negative mediating effect holds only when the counterfeit brand is highly prominent. Third, the mediating effect depends on consumers’ moral rationalization, with a positive impact on the purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits, regardless of brand prominence.

This study represents a preliminary inquiry into the dynamics between face consciousness and materialism in influencing Chinese consumers’ purchase intention toward counterfeit luxury products. Unlike their Western counterparts, whose materialistic views of possessions predict their counterfeit luxury consumption (Davidson et al., 2019), Chinese consumers are more likely to be driven by the social implications of counterfeit luxury to communicate a prestigious social image to others on account of genuine luxuries’ high social recognition.

While Chinese consumers are one of the most potent global luxury buyers, they are immersed in the world’s biggest counterfeit luxury market. By digging into the core value of Chinese consumers (i.e. face consciousness), this research provides a number of managerial implications for luxury goods companies to engage in international efforts to educate consumers against counterfeit luxury.

This study makes at least three contributions to the counterfeit consumption literature. First, this study represents a preliminary inquiry into the dynamics between face consciousness and materialism in influencing Chinese consumers’ purchase intention toward counterfeit luxury products. Second, this research identified the complex mechanism of face consciousness as an independent variable on consumers’ purchase intention toward luxury counterfeits. Finally, the authors examined the boundary conditions of brand prominence and consumers’ moral rationalization. The findings may help luxury brand managers identify strategies to discourage counterfeit consumption.

Brand hate as a distinct phenomenon of consumer negativity has attracted considerable research attention in recent years. However, scant attention has been paid to explain the underlying mechanism of brand hate. Therefore, the present study aims to unveil how brand hate stirs in embarrassing situations and what repercussions it ignites that deteriorate the consumer–brand relationship.

The present study follows a mixed-method research design by conducting in-depth interviews with 16 consumers and then collecting three waves of time-lagged data from 217 respondents of two different countries. The reliability and validity have been established through confirmatory factor analysis, and hypotheses were analyzed using structural equation modeling and moderated-mediated models.

The results of both qualitative and quantitative investigations reveal that brand embarrassment instigates brand hate, and brand hate leads to brand detachment. Brand hate also mediates the relationship between brand embarrassment and brand detachment. Consumer vanity enhances the strength of brand embarrassment's effects on brand hate. This relationship further depicts the moderated mediation pattern as consumers with high vanity traits express extreme emotions of hate and detachment from the embarrassing brands. In addition, the findings demonstrate that the moderating role of consumer vanity is more pronounced among young consumers.

The study marks an initial attempt to explain the whole process of brand hate by incorporating brand embarrassment, brand detachment, consumer vanity and age in an integrated moderated mediation model. The study enhances brand managers' understanding of the severity of the consequences of embarrassing situations and devising preventive strategies.

Several studies have shown that superstitious beliefs, such as beliefs in “lucky” product attributes, influence consumer purchase behaviour. Still, little is known about how social influence, in particular mere social presence, impacts consumer superstition-related purchase decisions. Drawing on impression management theory, this paper aims to investigate the effect of social presence on consumer purchase decisions of products featuring lucky charms including the role of anticipated embarrassment as a mediator of the social presence effect.

In three studies, participants select products that feature or do not feature a lucky charm. They make these selections under varying conditions of social presence, as induced by the shopping setting in the scenario or through the use of confederates or fellow participants observing them make a real product selection. Participants are students from Australia and China.

The studies show that social presence makes consumers less likely to select products that feature a lucky charm. This suppressing effect is mediated by the consumers’ anticipated embarrassment.

The study investigates the effect of social presence but does not investigate different parameters of social presence such as the number of people present and their familiarity. The study investigates effects for purchase settings but does not include effects of usage and neither does it look into differences across product types or lucky charm types.

Marketers should be careful to not make lucky charms too publicly salient. Online settings are more suitable than mortar-and-brick settings for selling products featuring a lucky charm.

The present research is the first to investigate consumer purchase behaviour for a product featuring a lucky charm. It is also the first to investigate the impact of social influence on superstition-based decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what may influence participation in mobile collaborative consumption (CC). In particular, the authors investigate the effects of individual sociability and psychological antecedents including enjoyment, social connection, altruistic motivation, reputation, trust and embarrassment on the participation intention in this emerging phenomenon, as well as their relationships.

Survey approach was employed to validate the research model.

Hedonic factor, i.e. enjoyment, and social-related factors including altruistic motivation, reputation and embarrassment emerge as important antecedents of participation in mobile CC. On top of these factors, individual sociability plays an important role, by acting as a direct antecedent of the dependent variable, while also influencing their perceived greater altruistic motivation and reputation from participating in the CC. Yet, sociability has no significant effect on perceived enjoyment and embarrassment associated with the activity, suggesting that addressing these factors may encourage individuals with low sociability to participate.

This study taps into mobile technology to support CC in daily consumption activities, and highlights the factors that influence people’s participation in such activities. More importantly, the findings suggest that while it is more likely for individuals with high sociability to participate in this emerging form of social activities, for consumers with low sociability, addressing the enjoyment aspect and embarrassment issue of the activities may nonetheless promote their participation.

This study aims to examine the roles of face consciousness, materialism and emotions play in sustainable luxury brand consumption (SLBC) among Millennials in a Collective society.

Three experimental design studies using scenario-based methodologies along with the survey method were conducted in China to test the proposed research model.

Study 1 shows that face consciousness negatively and significantly affects SLBC, and this effect is mediated by materialism. Study 2 reveals that when Millennials experienced great authentic pride, there is a positive association between face consciousness and SLBC. Furthermore, Study 3 reveals that when Millennials are exposed to a high risk of embarrassment, materialists’ willingness to engage in SLBC increases.

The current research has significant theoretical implications for studying SLBC, especially among young consumers. This study contributes to a better understanding of the relationships among face consciousness, materialism, pride, risk of embarrassment and SLBC in a Collective culture context, where luxury consumption is valued.

Sustainable luxury consumption is a new and under-examined research area. This research extends the SLBC literature in the context of a collective society and provides empirical evidence for sustainable consumption and luxury consumption in general. The research also contributes to the literature by examining the moderating role of self-conscious emotion in the relationship between face consciousness and SLBC.

This research documents the responsibilities and stresses of people with homeless relatives. Health and housing problems create a variety of challenges and sometimes burdens within families which are particularly stressful for family caregivers who are actively involved with helping homeless adults.

Our study and data examine stress proliferation and stress buffering among people with homeless relatives using quantitative data from 118 interviews, mostly with parents and siblings of homeless adults.

Quantitative data from 118 interviews, largely from parents and siblings of homeless adults, show that people who spend more time or money helping homeless relatives experience higher levels of stress. Stress levels are also higher among those who help a homeless relative with activities of daily living and those who work to prevent harm that involves a homeless relative. Stress derived from efforts to prevent harm is associated with stronger social support to people with homeless relatives.

Social and health service providers can provide helpful social support for both homeless people and for people with homeless relatives, particularly in circumstances where harm reduction is required.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of shame in entrepreneurship. Extant research in relation to the entrepreneurial process has tended to concentrate upon the entrepreneur as hero and other positive aspects of the process. Consequently, the darker sides of the entrepreneurial personality and enterprise culture such as the role of shame remain a relatively under researched facet of entrepreneurship theory. Despite this dearth of actual empirical studies, the negative aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour associated with the “flawed hero model of entrepreneurship” are implicitly understood. These negative aspects include hubris, tragedy, narcissism, over‐stretching, hedonism, personality disorders, status anxiety, self‐centeredness, destructive relationships, alcoholism, suicide and the most heinous of all, business failure.

The paper considers the deeply social phenomenon of shame on the entrepreneur and his or her world by developing a conceptual model of shame. The social script of shame is analysed as found in novels and as found in real life newspaper reports of such epic tragedies, using a chosen methodology of narrative analysis.

The world portrayed in narrative is very much a “man's world” in which shame is a personal construct, a penance to be endured or ended and in the process a narrative script is developed. Shame is a deeply personal cognitive emotion easier to study in narrative than in person. From the stories of flawed heroes we construct a holistic model of possible entrepreneurial trajectories that take cognisance of wellbeing issues and cover the unspoken events that occur after a fall from grace. But why should we expect the story to end with the entrepreneur in crisis staring into the abyss?

Little previous work has been undertaken to explore entrepreneurial shame using both the entrepreneurship literature and narrative analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the question of how to meet the needs of older people living at home with dementia who have problems with continence. The paper is focused on social care practice in community settings.

This paper is practice focused and draws on the authors’ research and experiences in clinical care, workforce development and service improvement.

This paper summarises research on incontinence and its negative effects on quality of life and care relationships. It describes the impact of incontinence in terms of social embarrassment, restricted social activity, extra work (such as laundry) and costs, but also distress. It links research with care practice, with a focus on people with dementia who may be at particular risk of both continence problems and of assumptions that nothing can be done to assist them.

This paper provides questions that could be addressed in commissioning and provision of services and argues that they need to be informed by care practitioners’ experiences. It provides details of sources of support that are available at national and local levels.

This paper draws together research on continence and social care practice to provide a series of self-assessment questions for local services. It focuses on social care workers who are at the frontline of practice including personal assistants and carers.