消费者何时愿意选择与规避群体关联的品牌?

When will consumers choose brands associated with dissociative groups?

消费者何时愿意选择与规避群体关联的品牌?规避群体对消费者的影响机制还需要进一步研究。基于心理逆反理论,本文通过3个实验探讨自由威胁对消费者选择与规避群体关联的品牌的影响。结果发现,当消费者感知到高自由威胁时,选择与规避群体关联的品牌的意愿较高,心理逆反发挥中介作用,叙事和自尊水平对上述影响关系具有调节作用。叙事性的信息使得被试因自由威胁所产生的心理逆反降低,从而对与规避群体关联的品牌的选择意愿降低。对于高自尊的个体,在高自由威胁时更愿意选择与规避群体关联的品牌;而对于低自尊的个体,在高/低自由威胁情况下对规避群体关联的品牌的偏好无显著差异。本文探讨了自由威胁对消费者品牌偏好的影响,丰富了规避群体和品牌选择的研究;验证了心理逆反在自由威胁与规避群体关联品牌偏好之间的中介作用,深化了心理逆反理论。本文对企业在保留现有客户群的基础上,如何吸引外群体消费者具有一定的指导价值。

Prior research has consistently demonstrated that consumers have a negative preference for brands associated with dissociative groups.Conditions under which these preferences might be changed have remained largely unexamined.The current work investigates the effect of threat of freedom on consumers’preferences for brands associated with dissociative groups.We propose that consumers who experience a high level of threat of freedom will prefer brands associated with dissociative groups.This effect is mediated by a heightened feeling of psychological reactance induced by the high level of threat of freedom.We also examined the moderating role of narrative and self-esteem on the effect.One pilot experiment and three laboratory experiments were conducted to test our conceptualization.In experiment 1,we assessed the basic effect by which threat of freedom influences consumers’preferences for brands associated with dissociative groups.In this experiment,we also examined the mediating effect of psychological reactance.In experiment 2,we tested the robustness of the effect found in experiment 1 and investigated the moderating role of means of narrative through a two-by-two inter-subject design(freedom threat:low vs.high and means of narrative:yes vs.no).In experiment 3,we investigated the moderating role of self-esteem through a two-by-two mixed design(freedom threat:low vs.high and self-esteem:low vs.high).The results of three experiments confirm our predictions.The results of experiment 1 showed that the participants in the high threat-of-freedom group tended to prefer brands associated with dissociative groups.This effect was found to be mediated by psychological reactance.In experiment 2,our findings showed that the influence of threat of freedom on consumers’preference for brands associated with dissociative groups was replicated when a non-narrative information transmission model was used,and the effect was mitigated when a narrative information transmission mode was used.Finally,experiment 3 confirmed the moderating role of self-esteem by showing that participants with high self-esteem tended to prefer brands associated with dissociative groups when they experienced high vs.low threat of freedom.For participants with low self-esteem,such effects became non-significantly different.The current research has theoretical and practical contributions in the following aspects.First,it contributes to the literature of dissociative groups by documenting a condition in which consumers’negative attitude toward brands associated with dissociative groups can be improved.Second,this research extends the current literature on threat of freedom by revealing a preference for brands associated with dissociative groups as a new behavioral downstream.Finally,our findings have clear marketing implications.Certain types of consumers may experience varying levels of threat of freedom.Marketers may consider using actors who represent a dissociative identity in their marketing communications to attract this type of consumers.