Abstract
To cope with self-threat being induced by personal setbacks in daily life, compensatory consumption, especially on symbolic product, has been found to do valuable help to resolve discrepancies between ideal and actual self-concept. Conforming to symbolic self-completion theory, the current study adopted event-related potentials to explore the objective information processing stages in self-concept-impaired status (the defeat group) on a neural level. The behavioral results replicated previous findings that the defeat group gained stronger purchase intention for symbolic products than utilitarian products. The electrophysiological data demonstrated that perceptual difficulties for products in preliminary stage (N1) were steady among conditions, and after that, information processing separation emerged. In contrast to the individuals with a draw experience, those with a defeat experience raised highly focused attention (P2) and eager expectation (N2) for products, especially for symbolic ones. Meanwhile, symbolic (vs. utilitarian) products also evoked a higher emotional arousal level and slowed the diminishment of involved attentional resource (late positive potential) at late cognitive processing stage. Taken together, the sequential integration of multiple neural indicators contributes to elucidating the processing stages of compensatory consumption behavior.
Highlights
Reality often falls short of expectations in real life
No significance was observed for the utilitarian product in the defeat group (M = 3.72, SE = 0.16, p = 0.09) or the symbolic product in the draw group (M = 3.93, SE = 0.16, p = 0.67)
The increment from utilitarian to symbolic products was larger in the defeat group (d = 0.88) than that in the draw group (d = 0.46)
Summary
Humans routinely experience a variety of personal setbacks manifesting as discrepancies between ideal and actual self-concepts (Mandel et al, 2017), including core aspects such as self-identity, authority, intelligence, and perception of affiliation (e.g., Dalton, 2008; Rucker and Galinsky, 2008; Loveland et al, 2010; Lee and Shrum, 2012). The setbacks might result in negative mental states and induce individual motivation to resolve those discrepancies (Tesser, 1988). As an important strategy for coping with selfthreats, symbolic consumption can achieve symbolic significance (e.g., status manifestation, conception expression, and class approach) through certain consumption behaviors referred to as Neural Salience of Compensatory Consumption compensatory consumption (Gronmo, 1988; Woodruffe-Burton, 1998; Rucker and Galinsky, 2008; Kim and Gal, 2014). A critical shared feature is that consumers seek symbolic rather than utilitarian values from these products or services (Rucker, 2009)
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