Impression Management In Consumption Perspective

People create attractive appearance to convey the desired image to others in interpersonal interaction. In turn, people also observe the appearance of others and initially anchor judgment and inference on assumptions of physical appearance and personal stereotypes about that appearance. The perception of the appearance is relatively holistic, meaning that observers are unlikely to distinguish between situations where the product they use makes the target attractive and when other cues (i.e., their physiognomy) make them attractive. In most cases, observers do not question the image being portrayed by product users, instead believing that people are the way they appear, the impression formed at the face value would influence attitudes and behaviors further. This dissertation argues that under certain conditions, observerswill make the inference that the target deliberately try to create certain impressions.Consumer behavior has been an important role in people’s daily life, consumers use products to convey a particular symbolic meaning to others. Starting from the perspective of consumer behavior, this paper aims to investigate the effect of product attributes on impression management inference. Negative attitudes towards impression manager have been well documented in impression formation and impression management literatures, this dissertation argues that IM inferences will, under certain circumstances, negatively impact attitudes towards the product itself. This paper focus on three typical roles of product attributes,product outward appearance, product functionality, and brand, respectively, to explore how the product attractiveness, usage context, non-functional features, brands and brand prominence make influence on the IM inference, and the downstream attitudes towards the product itself.This study provides the following conclusion:(1)IM inferences can be influenced by the attractiveness of the product and the product functionality in usage context, IM inferences can be inflated when the product is attractive and there is no functional explanation to mitigate these inferences. When the product is functional, IM inference still exists.(2) luxury as well as are more likely to lead to IM inference. With regard to downstream consequences, non-luxury with non-functional features gains positive attitudes than the those without one. As to luxury, the result is the opposite.(3) Prominent prestigious brand leads more IM inference and positive attitudes, for the low prestige brand, prominent logo leads more IM inference but negative attitudes instead.