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Prior research does not provide a clear picture of how managers can effectively manage customer in-role and extra-role behaviours in a retail setting. This study aims to test the differential impact of the two main customer relationship predictor paths – identity-based and satisfaction-based paths – on customer in-role and extra-role behaviours.

A random sample of 500 customers from the flagship store of an up-market, international department store chain participated in a written survey. Purchase spending data for each customer was obtained from the retailer’s loyalty card database.

The two studied predictor paths possess a differential impact on customer extra-role behaviours. Civic virtue and co-creation behaviours are exclusively driven by the identity-based path, whereas sportsmanship is driven solely by the satisfaction-based path. Moreover, the identity-based path impacts purchase behaviour only when symbolic purchase motivation is high. Overall satisfaction has no impact on purchase behaviour.

In some retailing contexts, extra-role behaviours such as co-creation or civic virtue might simply be irrelevant (e.g. discount chains).

Managers, who have the intention to stimulate customers to give constructive feedback on products or services, or to involve them in co-creation activities, are well advised to also invest in identity-based path activities.

This study is the first to empirically test the effects of customer identification and overall customer satisfaction on the various dimensions of customer in-role and extra-role behaviours. Customer extra-role behaviours should not be conceptualised as one global construct but should comprise distinct dimensions of discretionary behaviours that have different antecedents.

For as long as luxury has existed, it has been criticized, by philosophers and moralists, who condemn self-indulgence, hedonism and vanity. Yet these concerns have not prevented the remarkable expansion of the luxury sector, evidence that most buyers revel in unashamed luxury. Modern economists point out the link between the development of the luxury market and the growth of social inequality. This study aims to assess how much guilt consumers feel during luxury purchases and identify its levers.

Based on 3,162 real luxury buyers from 6 countries, both Asian and western, emerging and mature luxury markets, a partial least squares-structural equation models (PLS-SEM) analysis assesses the level of guilt experienced during luxury purchases and identifies which drivers most impact guilt.

This study assesses the presence of a little guilt among a significant portion of luxury buyers across countries. Two countries present extreme scores: the USA (55.6%) and Japan (32%). Overall, the main driver of guilt is that luxury makes economic inequality highly visible; interestingly the pursuit of hedonism reduces the feelings of guilt.

These findings have notable implications for luxury companies as the long-term success of this sector would be questionable if it attracts social criticism and induces distressing feelings among clients.

Luxury brands need to implement guilt reducing communication strategies.

The luxury sector as a whole should redefine its purpose and mission.

This level of guilt experienced during purchases rarely has been investigated in prior luxury research. Yet luxury addresses larger targets, from the happy few to the happy many. Thanks to PLS-SEM modelization, the same hierarchy of guilt driving factors is revealed across countries.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what motivates consumers, in particular consumers of local food products or locavores, to purchase in local retail channels vs traditional supermarkets. Using the Theory of Reasoned Action, and reviewing the literature on traceability, social relationships, involvement, values, motivation, and distribution channels, the authors propose a model explaining the antecedents and consequences of local food consumption for both locavores and traditional supermarket consumers.

Face to face interviews were conducted in supermarket and farmers market contexts in a mid-sized city in France. A structural equation modelling was used to explain the relationship between the examined variables.

The results suggest that consumers in traditional food distribution channels are not very involved with local food products. Alternatively, this research shows that for locavores, traceability and social links are positively related to involvement with local food products, which lowers price perceptions and positively influences utilitarian shopping value.

The research provides a first empirical and academic perspective on local food consumption within different food retail channels in Europe. Much of the recent results on locavores and their behaviours have been conducted in North America and/or have remained rather conceptual.

In the purchase intention of green products context, researchers have mainly investigated the role of symbolism but have mostly discussed symbolic attributes/meanings in terms of social status only. This research aims to investigate the impact of four perceived symbolic meanings of green clothing (status, environmentalism, innovation and fashion symbols) on consumers' purchase intention of green clothing through their attitude toward it. Besides, the moderating role of a consumer mindset in the indirect relationship between symbolic attributes and the purchase intention of green products through consumer attitude is examined.

The data were collected through a survey from a sample of 325 respondents in Turkey, especially younger ones. The data were analyzed via confirmatory factor analysis and hypothesized relationships were tested with multiple and simple regression analyses and PROCESS macros in SPSS.

All symbolic meanings of green clothing impact purchase intention positively and indirectly through consumers' attitudes toward it. The results of moderated mediation analyses showed that the impact of symbolic meanings, except for environmentalism symbol, on purchase intention through consumer attitude was significantly moderated by the consumer mindset.

This research contributes to the under-researched areas of the impact of various symbolic attributes/meanings of green clothing on consumers' purchase intention. Besides, this study advances the role of consumer mindset in consumer behavior research in such a way that it connects mindsets of personality, consumers' attitudes toward green products and their green purchase intention. Furthermore, this study addresses the gap in regard to the role of mindsets of personality on sustainable/environmental behaviors. It will provide implications for fashion marketing managers to develop appropriate targeting, positioning and communication strategies for consumers' mindsets.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Generation Y consumers’ symbolic consumption on brand attitude and purchase intention toward global brands.

A conceptual model has been developed to illustrate the proposed relationships among the related variables. Data from a total of 300 usable surveys were collected from Thai Generation Y consumers. The proposed hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling analyses.

The study found that Generation Y consumers’ symbolic consumption has a significant and positive effect on brand attitude and purchase intention.

Time and resources limitation did not allow to study the larger sample. Future research should include more product categories and more global brands. Sample can be extended to consumers in ASEAN countries to provide more comprehensive insights into consumer perceptions and brand behaviors toward global brands.

The findings suggest that symbolic consumption is a key motivation to increase purchase intention when developing marketing strategies for the Generation Y consumer.

This study has contributions to symbolic consumption and Generation Y literature combining several important dimensions into a structural model, and examines the relationships among these dimensions.

The purpose of this paper is to give retailers an insight into consumers' capacity for feeling pleasure associated with specific purchase motivations across different product categories.

A hedonic regression model was estimated from data collected from shoppers in shopping malls that enabled the generation of implicit prices of each constituent purchasing motive.

Hedonic values of consumer motivations vary for different products categories. Convenience items, like bread, allow little scope for self‐congruence, whereas shampoo offers significant scope for pleasurable emotive appeals to boost consumers' status enhancement and social image. This study identified opportunities to create good feelings for the purchase of both bread and shampoos, by engaging shoppers' attention on themes relating to social referents and family values. Shopping items like apparel and specialty items like cosmetics offer prospects of titillating consumer motives of status and self‐image enhancement, respectively, by engaging them with reputable merchandise in reputable settings.

No insight was sought on the hedonic value of consumers' buying motivations of impulse purchases.

Products that are used in public (apparel) or whose consumption outcome is manifest in public (shampoos and cosmetics), have purchase motivations that are susceptible to hedonic appeals. On the other hand, only a few purchase motivations for products like bread, with limited “public face”, have some hedonic value. The results of this study inform retailers on choice of purchase motivations to direct engagement appeals in order to generate emotional excitement. Getting consumers to fantasize on themes relating to relevant purchasing motives could facilitate their purchase choice.

Targeting consumers' preferred urges is an efficient way to stimulate buying intentions.

While previous research underscored self-presentation desire as an important motivator of digital item purchase, user needs for digital items may become increasingly inner-focused with the maturation of virtual communities (VCs). The purpose of this paper is to posit that self-discrepancy and self-gratification are key to explaining user purchase of digital items.

A survey of 310 users of a social media-based VC well supports the hypotheses.

The tenet of this study is that individuals purchase digital items in VCs not only for self-presentation purpose per se, but more importantly for reasons of more inner-focused, such as due to their self-discrepancy that motivates them to purchase digital items to enhance self-esteem, and also for self-gratification. Furthermore, self-discrepancy arising from comparing ones’ current self against how they perceive others expect them to ideally be (i.e. self-other discrepancy) increases their self-presentation desire.

Overall the findings enrich the current view that individuals purchase digital items mainly to present themselves to others (Kim et al., 2012), thus affording a more complete understanding of this behavior that has both important research and practical implications.

This paper conducts a meta-analytic review of literature focused on the salient socio-psychological and personality antecedents of luxury purchase intention. It investigates the role of moderators that can assist an effective market segmentation of the luxury market in both emerging and developed economies.

The final analysis includes 95 effect sizes from 42 studies conducted in 15 countries, spanning 5 continents, from 2000 to 2020. The review examined moderating role of Hofstede's cultural dimensions, market type (emerging vs developed) and other study characteristics.

Findings show that socio-psychological antecedents had a more salient role than personality antecedents in driving luxury purchase intention (LPI), across both emerging and developed markets. Normative influence, status consumption and materialism exhibited a stronger influence on LPI in emerging markets than developed markets. Further, stronger effects for normative influence and status consumption on LPI were found in high power distance cultures. The role of seeking uniqueness was more salient and the role of normative influence was less salient in studies with a higher percentage of females. Conspicuous consumption was a stronger driver of LPI for fashion luxury products than other luxury products. The study also proposes distinct definitions of status and conspicuous consumption as there is often theoretical overlap of these constructs in literature.

A meta-analytic review may leave blind-spots due to lack of sufficient number of studies investigating certain theoretically relevant moderators. The authors discuss these gaps, along with study limitations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous study has conducted a meta-analytic review of the antecedents and moderators of LPI. With the extension of luxury demand beyond the developed countries in the West to the “new rich” consumers in the East, it becomes imperative to conduct a meta-analysis for a richer understanding of the drivers of luxury demand across different cultural orientations and market segmentations.

There has been considerable research into the global phenomenon of luxury brand consumption, but relatively few studies have empirically explored key relationships influencing purchase intention. This research aims to consider the respective roles of social context, individual perception, and vanity, and to set these relationships within a broader theoretical context of the literature on possession and consumer identity.

The empirical study consisted of a large‐scale survey conducted among Chinese luxury brand consumers in Taiwan. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression.

The findings support the influence of the social context on purchase intention for luxury brands. There was weaker support for the role of perception. The experiential and functional aspects of luxury brand purchase were positively correlated with purchase intention, but symbolic value was not. Physical and achievement vanity had a positive impact on purchase intention while only achievement vanity had a moderating effect on perception.

This study offers new empirical support for the proposition that vanity has a role in luxury brand purchase intention and thereby shades both theoretical and managerial understanding of luxury brand consumption. It also suggests that symbolic value, which is highly influential in western conceptualizations of luxury brand meaning, needs to be re‐evaluated in the context of Chinese consumers.

This study offers new empirical findings which contribute to a re‐conceptualization of the antecedents of purchase intention in the area of luxury brand consumption. In particular, the study provides evidence of the roles of social context, perception and vanity in a Chinese consumption context to inform the primarily western models of luxury brand purchase intention.