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1. Introduction
Luxury consumption can provoke consumers’ positive emotional response, negative emotional response or mixed emotions of both (Hagtvedt and Patrick, 2015; Pozharliev et al., 2015). Consumers may feel positive affect from luxury consumption, such as pleasure, as luxury products satisfy their personal style or provide personal fulfillment (Amatulli et al., 2015; De Barnier and Valette-Florence, 2013; Westbrook and Oliver, 1991). At the same time, luxury consumption may trigger consumers’ negative affect, such as a sense of guilt, because it is often viewed as conspicuous or excessive spending (Boujbel and d’Astous, 2015; Kivetz and Simonson, 2002; Lala and Chakraborty, 2015). In this vein, a hallmark of luxury consumption lies not only in consumer experience of pleasure but also in the experience of guilt (Hagtvedt and Patrick, 2015). This implies that individuals’ internal conflict between pleasure and guilt may be a key factor that explains their luxury consumption behavior and loyalty.
Recent consumer studies also report that luxury consumers feel conflicted between their desire to spend (and experience pleasure) and their aspiration to do the right thing (and avoid guilt) (Berens, 2013; Borges, 2014). As these consumers show growing interests in personal and societal issues such as psychological well-being, economic recession and environmental degradation, they seek a conscious mode of consumption that grants justification for their spending and reduces guilt, while maintaining their feeling of pleasure (Borges, 2014). As a result, they shun away from buying luxury as an extrinsic means to show off to others (i.e. conspicuous consumption), but respond more favorably toward luxury consumption that reflects their intrinsic values of personal style and their conscientious values of timeless style over short-term fashion and long-lasting quality over excessive quantity (i.e. style consumption) (Berens, 2013). They believe buying luxury for personal fulfillment and its sustainable credentials signifies thoughtful consumption that allows them to keep enjoying self-indulgent pleasure, while reducing the sense of guilt induced by the undesirable consequences of conspicuous luxury consumption (Borges, 2014).
While the aforementioned consumer studies provide interesting insights into luxury consumers, there is a lack of empirical evidence to support whether consumers truly experience the dual emotions of pleasure and guilt from luxury consumption and how the two emotions influence each other. To this end, we raise three research questions...