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1. Introduction
Luxury consumption intensifies many of the motivations underlying consumer behavior. It offers superior quality and performance, great elegance and beauty, long heritage and tradition, personalization, conspicuousness and increased status. Unlike premium products (Quelch, 1987) that promise better-than-ordinary quality and functional performance, luxury is a world apart, marked by its idealized lifestyle and products, high prices and out-of-the-ordinary brands. Buying luxury products thus is a departure from normal purchasing.
Since ancient Greece, philosophers, religious leaders and moralists have criticized luxury and modern economists echoed these criticisms (Smith, 1759), along with sociologists (Durkheim, 1911; Veblen, 1899) and today sustainable development advocates (Bendell and Kleanthous, 2007). It is not surprising that some consumers feel ambivalence vis-à-vis luxury purchasing (Ladwein and Sanchez, 2018). However, these societal criticisms have not stopped the growth of the luxury market (Bain & Co., 2020) or diminished its attractiveness to many clients. Yet as luxury penetration grows, these criticisms may become more relevant. In addition, stimulated by marketing efforts, price accessibility and e-commerce, more consumers might experience a feeling of guilt. This feeling rarely has been investigated in prior luxury research. The Research Handbook on Luxury Branding (Morhart et al., 2020) cites the word “guilt” only four times. Why such a lack of interest?
This lack of research relied on a basic premise: why would luxury buyers feel guilty about their choices? Those consumers who view luxury as problematic would not purchase such items in the first place. There is a self-selection bias. Also, many negative issues associated with luxury are societal, but this does not mean that luxury purchasing causes feelings of guilt. Buyers can be aware of such societal issues and still consume without guilt. A major motivation of purchasing luxury items remains setting oneself apart from others or above others. Many luxury buyers do not care what others think about their consumption behavior. They feel they deserve it and revel in unashamed luxury. As a consequence feelings of guilt could not be a meaningful phenomenon in the luxury market.
Yet recent international market research on luxury consumption provides some evidence that contradicts this hypothesis: when being asked many luxury clients state they feel a little guilt when purchasing luxury items (IPSOS, 2016). Hagtvedt and Patrick (2016) report the...