Purchase Intention Research Of Luxury: A Cross-cultural Comparison Between Chinese And US Consumers

Owing to the surprising strength of the consumption of Chinese consumers, the globalluxury market had achieved a flourishing development over the past ten years before2012. Since2013, the prosperous era of two-digit growth rate has gone. Meanwhile, the explosive growth ofthe global luxury market driven by Chinese market has ceased to exist. With the increasingincome, the consumption of Chinese consumers shows a great diversity. And their consumptionattitude is changing, from “showing-off orientation” to “cognitive orientation”. Compared withthe United States, such a mature consumer market, what new differences between Chinese andUS consumers may this consumption awareness transformation lead to?Under this background, corporated with the theories of apparel consumption behavior,luxury and purchase intention, the study has compared the luxury consumption behavior ofconsumers from China and America, based on the cross-cultural idea. Using the compositebehavior intention model of Jin&Kang (including Lee’s model and decomposed Ajzen’s model)for reference, this article built a luxury purchase intention model to analyze the differences ofluxury purchase intentions and their influencing factors (“Attitude”,“Subjective Norm”,“Internal Perceived Behavior Control”,“External Perceived Behavior Control”,“PerceivedFace”,“Group Conformity Awareness”) between Chinese and US consumers. And the study hasproved the adaptability of Jin&Kang’s composite model in the field of luxury consumption,enriching the cross-cultural comparison studies of luxury consumers’behavior.This study collected639valid questionnaires in total (including324Chinese questionnairesand315American questionnaires), using the statistical software SPSS19.0to do descriptivestatistical analysis, factor analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. As the result, thestudy came to the conclusions as following:(1) The most important factor affecting the luxury purchase intention is “Subjective Norm”,followed by “Perceived Face”, and the next is “External Perceived Behavior Control”, then“Group Conformity Awareness”,“Attitude” and “Internal Perceived Behavior Control”.(2) The most important factor affecting the luxury purchase intention of Chinese consumersis “Perceived Face”, followed by “Subjective Norm”, and the next is “Internal PerceivedBehavior Control”, then “Attitude”,“Group Conformity Awareness” and “External Perceived Behavior Control”.(3) The most important factor affecting the luxury purchase intention of US consumers is“Group Conformity Awareness”, followed by “Subjective Norm”, and the next is “Attitude”,then “Internal Perceived Behavior Control” and “External Perceived Behavior Control”, with nosignificant effect of “Perceived Face”.Less foreign researches about consumer behavior, especially whose study objects areconsumers from western countries, brought “Face” and “Group Conformity” into purchaseintention models. Considering the penetration of different economies and cultures in theworldwide, this study proposed the hypotheses about the influences from these two specialconcepts (“Face” and “Group Conformity”) in Confusion culture with the luxury purchaseintention of US consumers. As the study shows,“Perceived Face” has no significant effect on it,but “Group Conformity Awareness” has been proved to be the most important factor. Thisfinding may give some inspiration for related researches in the future.Finally, according to the conclusions of this study, the article proposed some suggestions tobetter serve the global luxury market.