The Role of Self-Construal and Emotionsin Younger Consumers’ Commitment to Luxury Brands

Despite the increasing recognition of the value of emotions and younger consumers in luxury market segments, little research has focused on the role consumer characteristics and emotions play in younger consumers’ commitment to luxury brands. Drawing on the identity-motivation model and the idea of self-construal, this study identifies the contributing factors of younger consumers ’ commitment to luxury fashion brands. Specifically, this study examines the role of consumer characteristics (i.e., self-construal), the self-expressiveness of brands, and emotional factors (i.e., brand love and brand attachment) in developing consumer-brand relationships. The proposed model was tested with college students in the U.S., which supplied a representative group of younger consumers of luxury fashion brands. The data were collected using web-based surveys and analyzed using structural equation modeling method. The results showed that consumers who were characterized with interdependent self-construal had positive perceptions of self-expressive luxury fashion brands. Furthermore, the perception of self-expressive brands promotes the consumers ’ brand love of and brand attachmentto luxury fashion brands. Also, while both improved brand commitment, brand attachment had a greater impact on brand commitment than brand love. This study contributes to the literature by identifying driving forces of younger consumers ’ brand commitment. It also provides managerial implications for luxury fashion brands