Chen Ye, Zhuang Jingyi
School of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, China.
School of Management, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2024 Jun 22;14(7):521. doi: 10.3390/bs14070521.
When a bandwagon consumption trend of luxury fashion products appears, potential consumers tend to conform to the trend. The conformity behavior is enhanced by social media because it makes bandwagon trends more visible. However, no research has explored the drivers of fashion trend conformity in the social media age and the underlying mechanisms. Our empirical research demonstrates that fashion trend conformity is a socially directed type of behavior driven by trend perception and reference group pressure, which represent the informational and normative social influence stimuli, respectively. In addition to the direct impact, we also examine the mediating roles of demand amplification and the urge to buy impulsively (UBI). Demand amplification and UBI, respectively, reflect the rational cognitive reaction and irrational emotional reaction to stimuli of fashion bandwagon consumption. However, our results show that only the cognitive reaction path works, but the emotional reaction path does not. Put simply, trend conformity behavior is largely the result of consumers' rational reactions rather than irrational reactions to the social influence stimuli of bandwagon consumption. Our study contributes to the research on luxury fashion consumption by introducing three new concepts, i.e., fashion trend conformity, trend perception, and demand amplification, to describe and theorize the characteristics of consumer behavioral patterns for luxury fashion products and new drivers and novel underlying mechanisms of consumer behaviors in the social media age. Our findings offer practical insights for retailers and manufacturers to promote fashion trend conformity behavior.
当奢侈时尚产品出现跟风消费趋势时，潜在消费者往往会顺应这一趋势。社交媒体强化了这种从众行为，因为它使跟风趋势更加明显。然而，尚无研究探讨社交媒体时代时尚潮流从众行为的驱动因素及其潜在机制。我们的实证研究表明，时尚潮流从众行为是一种受潮流感知和参照群体压力驱动的社会导向型行为，它们分别代表信息性社会影响刺激和规范性社会影响刺激。除了直接影响，我们还考察了需求放大和冲动购买欲望（UBI）的中介作用。需求放大和冲动购买欲望分别反映了对时尚跟风消费刺激的理性认知反应和非理性情绪反应。然而，我们的结果表明，只有认知反应路径起作用，而情绪反应路径不起作用。简而言之，潮流从众行为很大程度上是消费者对跟风消费社会影响刺激的理性反应而非非理性反应的结果。我们的研究通过引入时尚潮流从众、潮流感知和需求放大这三个新概念，为奢侈时尚消费研究做出了贡献，以描述和理论化奢侈时尚产品消费者行为模式的特征以及社交媒体时代消费者行为的新驱动因素和潜在机制。我们的研究结果为零售商和制造商促进时尚潮流从众行为提供了实践启示。
