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Undermining the Restorative Potential of Compensatory Consumption: A Product’s Explicit Identity Connection Impedes Self-Repair
- Source :
- Journal of Consumer Research. 46:119-139
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- Oxford University Press (OUP), 2018.
-
Abstract
- When people experience threats to important aspects of their self-concept (e.g., power, intelligence, sociability), they often compensate by consuming products that symbolize success, mastery, or competence on the threatened self-domain (within-domain compensatory consumption). Our research examines whether such compensatory consumption is effective in repairing the self-concept. Across seven experiments, we show that whether compensatory consumption is effective depends on the extent to which the connection between the compensatory products and the threatened domains is made explicit. When the connections are made explicit (e.g., through product names and marketing slogans), self-repair is impeded, but when the connections are only implicit (product is inherently symbolic of self-threat domain), self-repair can be successful. We further show that these differential effects of product connection explicitness are mediated by rumination: explicit connections induce rumination about the self-threat, which undermines self-repair, whereas implicit connections cause no rumination, facilitating self-repair. Our research provides a reconciliation of conflicting findings on self-repair in previous research, and also shows that despite the differences in efficacy, consumers compensate regardless of whether product connections are implicit or explicit, which has implications for consumer well-being.
- Subjects :
- Economics and Econometrics
Connection (vector bundle)
Self-concept
Identity (social science)
compensatory consumption
050109 social psychology
self-threat
Competence (law)
Power (social and political)
materialism
Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
0502 economics and business
medicine
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
Product (category theory)
Business and International Management
Marketing
Consumption (economics)
05 social sciences
Self repair
Anthropology
Rumination
[SHS.GESTION]Humanities and Social Sciences/Business administration
050211 marketing
Materialism
medicine.symptom
Psychology
self-discrepancy
Cognitive psychology
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 15375277 and 00935301
- Volume :
- 46
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Consumer Research
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....7048d30a7b31828e4776dc8e507e74d6