ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2014, Vol. 46 ›› Issue (11): 1748-1759.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2014.01748

• 论文 • 上一篇    下一篇

人之将尽, 消费国货?死亡信息的暴露增加国货选择的现象、中介和边界条件解析

柳武妹1; 王海忠2; 何浏3   

  1. (1兰州大学管理学院, 兰州 730000) (2中山大学管理学院, 广州 510275) (3五邑大学经济管理学院, 江门 529020)
  • 收稿日期:2014-01-09 发布日期:2014-11-25 出版日期:2014-11-25
  • 通讯作者: 王海忠, E-mail: wanghzh.05@alum.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:

    国家自然科学基金项目(71172164, 71272243, 71272193)资助。

When One Is Dying, Will H/She Buy Domestic Products? Exploring Whether, Why and When the Exposure to Death-related Information Will (Not) Increase Domestic Brand Choices

LIU Wumei1; WANG Haizhong2; HE Liu3   

  1. (1 School of Management, Lanzhou University, Lan Zhou 730000, China); (2 School of Business, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guang Zhou 510275, China) (3 School of Business, Wu Yi University, Jiang Men 529020, China)
  • Received:2014-01-09 Online:2014-11-25 Published:2014-11-25
  • Contact: WANG Haizhong, E-mail: wanghzh.05@alum.sem.tsinghua.edu.cn

摘要:

死亡信息无处无时不在。恐惧管理理论认为, 死亡暴露会促使个体采取两种防御机制:支持文化世界观和提升自尊。来自西方发达国家消费者的数据显示, 死亡暴露会促使这些消费者偏爱国货、支持文化世界观, 内在机制是爱国主义情绪的唤醒。但对将购买外国货视为追求高自尊和高身份的发展中国家消费者而言, 尚没有学者检验死亡暴露会促使他们继续购买外国货以提升自尊, 还是转而购买国货以支持文化世界观。本文用实验检验了这两种竞争预测, 发现死亡暴露会增加发展中国家消费者的国货选择, 但机制是补偿个人控制感的缺失。同时, 已有探讨死亡暴露与国货偏好的研究并没有检验何时死亡暴露将不再增加国货偏好, 本文发现启动亲密的人际归属感是边界条件。

关键词: 控制感缺失, 死亡暴露, 国货选择, 人际归属感, 恐惧管理理论

Abstract:

Death exposure sells newspapers. Each of us is inevitably exposed to death everyday (e.g., read newspapers, listen to radios, etc.). Though data from consumers of western developed countries showed that death exposure could increase preference for the domestic products to foreign products, up to date, no research examined whether death exposure would drive consumers from developing countries to choose domestic products. Research on terror management theory argues that death exposure can trigger two defensive mechanisms: supporting cultural worldviews and seeking for self-esteem, while recent research further finds that consumers from developing countries tend to prefer buying foreign products to enhance their self-esteem and to seek for high social status. Thus we expect that when consumers from developing countries are exposed to death-related information, they may simultaneously adopt two defensive mechanisms: to choose foreign products to enhance their self-esteem, and to choose domestic products to support their cultural worldviews. The authors examined which of these two competitive mechanisms would prevail, finding that the cultural worldview defensive mechanism excelled, death exposure forced consumers from developing countries to choose domestic products. Further, recent research on TMT reported that death exposure triggered a strong patriotism emotion among consumers from western developed countries, which in turn resulted in their higher preference for the domestic products. The authors argue and find that feelings of control, rather than patriotism emotions mediate the effect of death exposure on domestic product choices of consumers from developing countries. More important, past research did not examine when death exposure would not increase domestic product purchase, the authors investigate this issue and find that after priming consumers’ warm interpersonal support, they will no longer choose domestic products. The authors conduct two experiments to examine whether, why and when death exposure will (not) increase domestic product choices of consumers from developing countries via changing ways of manipulating death exposure and altering product categories. Experiment 1 investigates whether and why death exposure (will) affect consumers’ product choices, finding that death exposure lowers participants’ feelings of personal control, thus to compensate for such a loss they choose domestic products with the hope that domestic country ingroups can help them regain agency control. After controlling for the influence of patriotism emotions, magnitude of fear death and ingroup identification, the mediating role of low feelings of personal control are still found to be significant. In Experiment 2, the authors further examine when death exposure will have no impact on consumers’ domestic product choice, finding that after strengthen consumers’ belongingness needs (via manipulating supportive interpersonal relationships), consumers encountering with death fear will not choose domestic products any more. The article theoretically enriches and advances consumer research in the domain of terror management and country-of-origin stereotypes, and managerially provides useful implications on organizational management in general, and on domestic brands’ advertising, social responsibility activities and new product innovation in particular.

Key words: loss of personal control, death exposure, domestic brand choices, belongingness, terror management theory