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Spending as protection: the need for safety increases preference for luxury products

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Abstract

We live in a world where physical threats, to ourselves and to our loved ones, are made salient every single day in the news and in the entertainment that we consume. Our research provides initial evidence that consumers survive in such a world by purchasing luxury brands to act as safety shields against these threats. This is because consumers derive symbolic safety value from luxury brands even when no functional safety features are relevant for the product category in which the brand operates. Thus, we hypothesize that when need for safety is likely salient (such as, after facing a physical safety threat), consumers are likely to show an increased preference for luxury brands, given the associations of luxury brands with safety. We provide empirical support for our proposed hypothesis, using four multi-method studies.

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Notes

  1. See Web Appendix 2 for detailed procedures.

  2. In Web Appendix 1, we used explicit measures to support the implicit IAT measures in Study 1 and found that individuals associate luxury brands with safety even when the product has no functional safety features.

  3. In Web Appendix 3, we show all the primes and measures used in this study and the next.

  4. In Web Appendix 4, we show pictures of the actual stimulus used in this study.

  5. Separate t tests conducted on preference for grocery store and coffee individually revealed the same pattern (grocery store: t[142] = 2.14, p = .03, d = .36, Mthreat = 3.27, SD = 1.87 vs. Mcontrol = 2.65, SD = 1.63; coffee: t[142] = 2.14, p = .03, d = .36, Mthreat = 3.90, SD = 1.86 vs. Mcontrol = 3.25, SD = 1.79).

  6. Each of the alternative explanations was tested as mediator of the relationship between threat and purchase of a luxury brand, and none of the six emerged significant.

  7. In Web Appendix 5, we present pretests of the new prime. In Web Appendix 6, we replicate results of Study 1 with the new prime, and in Web Appendix 7, we replicate the effect in a real-life context.

  8. In Web Appendix 4, we show pictures of the stimuli used in this study.

  9. Separate one-way ANOVAs conducted on preference for grocery store and coffee individually showed the same result (grocery store: F[1, 78] = 3.14, p = .08, Mthreat = 3.74, SD = 2.17 vs. Mcontrol = 2.95, SD = 1.79; coffee: F[1, 78] = 4.38, p = .04, Mthreat = 4.71, SD = 2.16 vs. Mcontrol = 3.76, SD = 1.88).

  10. In Web Appendix 8, we externally vary the mediator using a moderator to provide further support for our mediator.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA

    Han Ma & Narayan Janakiraman

  2. Texas Christian University, Texas City, TX, 76129, USA

    Hannah K. Bradshaw & Sarah E. Hill

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  1. Han Ma
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Correspondence to Narayan Janakiraman.

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Ma, H., Bradshaw, H.K., Janakiraman, N. et al. Spending as protection: the need for safety increases preference for luxury products. Mark Lett 30, 45–56 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11002-019-09480-0

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