When Do Consumers Indulge in Luxury? : Emotional Certainty Signals When to Indulge to Regulate Emotions

To counter the growing competition in the luxury market, luxury brands may develop competitive advantages by better understanding the phenomenon of emotion regulation consumption, or consumers' desire to indulge in luxury products to regulate their emotional state. While some people may engage in "retail therapy" when they feel bad, others embark on a shopping spree the minute they feel good. Thus, the positive or negative valence of the emotional state alone cannot fully explain emotion regulation consumption. Based on literature in emotions and indulgent behaviour, we propose that the effect of the valence of an emotional experience on preferences for luxury products is contingent on the certainty appraisal associated with the emotion, which will signal consumers whether their emotional state can change or not. Thus, the paper concentrates on the certainty-uncertainty component of emotions and investigates in two complementary studies how this component influences emotion regulation by luxury consumption. The results of this research demonstrate that the certainty appraisal associated with an emotion influences people's willingness to engage in luxury consumption as a way to regulate their emotions. First, we demonstrate that people in a negative emotional state associated with uncertainty (e. g., fear) are more willing to indulge in luxury products than those in a negative emotional state associated with certainty (e. g., anger) because luxury consumption would help them repair their emotional state. People in a certain negative emotional state are less willing to indulge because in this case luxury consumption would not help them repair their emotional state. Second, results show that participants in a positive emotional state associated with uncertainty (e. g., hope) are less likely to consume luxury products than those in a positive state associated with certainty (e. g., happiness) because luxury consumption could hurt their pleasant emotions, which they wish to maintain. The main theoretical contribution of this research is to show that the certainty appraisal moderates the effect of the valence of emotions on emotion regulation by signalling to consumers whether their emotional state can change or not. Theoretically, this helps to understand why different emotions of the same valence make consumers more or less willing to engage in emotion regulation. In addition, the key behaviour examined in this research is luxury consumption. Thus, besides showing the certainty appraisal signals when to regulate emotion, we apply these findings to a context relevant to marketing. By doing this, we integrate and contribute to research in emotions, emotion regulation, and indulgent behaviour, in particular luxury consumption. This research helps luxury brand managers to improve their understanding of when people in a positive or negative emotional state will engage in luxury consumption. Results demonstrate that it does not make much sense to invest in marketing activities to encourage emotional luxury consumption on the basis of people's good or bad emotional state alone. Any emotional state may mean to marketers both a chance and an obstacle to sell consumers a luxury product. The results provide marketers some guidelines on how to encourage emotional luxury consumption by fine-tuning their emotional marketing techniques. For example, they explain why a luxury brand may prefer a "happy" advertisement to a "hopeful" one, though both are positive emotions.