| As the saying goes," people are always looking for greener pastures ",status,as a symbol of social identity,has been the object of people’s pursuit since ancient times.Status not only represents an individual’s position in society,but also includes individual reputation,etc.It can be seen from this that status markers are more abstract concepts and cannot be directly displayed to others.However,in real life,people have the desire to reveal their ability and status to others,so how to display status becomes a problem.The simplest way for abstract concepts to be easily perceived is materialization,that is,to mark individual status with material visible to others.Therefore,people can show status by consuming goods.In this case,some people choose to consume the goods that can represent the target status in order to pursue the target status.In the field of consumer behavior,the consumption behavior produced in order to improve the status is called status consumption.The premise of obtaining status by consumption is that the commodity has the significance of symbolizing status.Previous studies on status consumption usually focus on money signals,emphasizing that consumers convey status to the outside world through the high price features of luxury products and other products.However,many studies have found that the status symbolism of consumption behavior is not limited to money.Consumers can also obtain external respect and status through consumption behaviors that show social value and ability.Therefore,on the basis of literature review,this study conducted an exploratory research on status consumption according to the dominance-prestige theory of status and with the help of the constructively grounded theory,and divided it into money-based status consumption and prestige-based status consumption.Among them,money-based status consumption refers to the consumption behavior that consumers demonstrate their status through the characteristics of money value,exclusivity,limited practicality and external significance transmitted by consumption in a specific consumption behavior,emphasizing that by virtue of the status significance characteristics of products,they prove to the outside world their own possession and dominance of economic resources such as wealth and so on to obtain status.Prestige-based status consumption refers to the consumption behavior that consumers display status through the characteristics of prestige value,pro-sociality,moral level and personal influence transmitted by consumption in specific consumption behaviors,and emphasizes showing their pro-sociality and personal ability and influence to the outside world to build social reputation and thus obtain status.With the classification of status consumption,the connotation and denotation of status consumption also change.Therefore,in-depth exploration of the influencing factors,psychological mechanism and boundary conditions of different types of status consumption is a beneficial supplement to the theory of status consumption.In view of the above problems,based on the self-threat situation,this paper discusses the psychological motivation and consumption behavior of consumers with different social and economic status when facing self-threat.At the same time,in view of the particularity of the relationship between self-threat and status consumption,this paper introduces self-compensation motivation and self-presentation motivation as the intermediary mechanism to better explain the occurrence mechanism of status consumption.Therefore,this paper designs two explanatory paths of status consumption according to consumer type differences.First of all,for individuals with low socioeconomic status,this paper designs a research path of "self-threat--selfcompensation motivation – money-based status consumption".At the same time,for individuals with high socioeconomic status,this paper designs a research path of "selfthreat--self-presentation motivation--prestige-based status consumption".Therefore,this paper constructs an explanatory model with socioeconomic status as the distinguishing mechanism and self-compensating motivation and self-presentation motivation as the mediating mechanism,and comprehensively reveals and verifies the formation reasons of status consumption under the influence of self-threat based on six experiments of three studies.In study 1,the main effect of self-threat on status consumption was tested by two sub-experiments,namely hypothesis 1 and hypothesis2.The results show that self-threat has a significant impact on different types of status consumption.Specifically,self-threat can improve individuals’ propensity to moneybased status consumption.Compared with non-threatened individuals,self-threatened individuals are more willing to engage in money-based status consumption.Self-threat can enhance individuals’ propensity to prestige-based status consumption.Compared with unthreatened individuals,self-threatened individuals are more willing to engage in prestige-based status consumption.In study 2,two sub-experiments were conducted to verify the interaction effect of self-threat and socioeconomic status on different types of status consumption,namely hypothesis 3 and hypothesis 4.The results showed that individuals with low socioeconomic status were more inclined to money-based status consumption under the self-threat situation.However,individuals with high socioeconomic status are more inclined to conduct prestige-based status consumption.In study 3,two sub-experiments were conducted to explore the explanatory mechanism of the influence of self-threat on the dual path of status elimination,namely,to verify hypothesis 5 and hypothesis 6.The results show that the mediating effect of selfcompensation motivation and self-presentation motivation between self-threat and status consumption,that is,under the self-threat situation,consumers of low socioeconomic status will have self-compensation motivation,and then show the consumption tendency of money-based status consumption,while consumers of high socioeconomic status will have self-presentation motivation.And then it shows the consumption tendency of the prestige-based status consumption.In conclusion,this paper constructs a research framework on the influence mechanism of consumers’ socioeconomic status on individual status consumption preference in the context of self-threat.In theory,this paper divides the types of status consumption and constructs a dual-path research model of the influence of socioeconomic status on the formation of status consumption based on the self-threat situation,and finds the mediating role of self-compensation motivation and selfpresentation motivation in explaining the formation of different types of status consumption.In practice,this paper proposes that marketers can strengthen the marketing of status products by paying attention to the expression of multiple status signals,strengthening the connection between self-threat and status consumption,giving play to the guiding role of consumers’ psychological motivation in status consumption behavior,and paying attention to the importance of social and economic status differences on status consumption marketing. |
