Trend Conformity Behavior of Luxury Fashion Products for Chinese Consumers in the Social Media Age: Drivers and Underlying Mechanisms

Abstract

When a bandwagon consumption trend of luxury fashion products appears, potential consumers tend to conform to the trend. The conformity behavior is enhanced by social media because it makes bandwagon trends more visible. However, no research has explored the drivers of fashion trend conformity in the social media age and the underlying mechanisms. Our empirical research demonstrates that fashion trend conformity is a socially directed type of behavior driven by trend perception and reference group pressure, which represent the informational and normative social influence stimuli, respectively. In addition to the direct impact, we also examine the mediating roles of demand amplification and the urge to buy impulsively (UBI). Demand amplification and UBI, respectively, reflect the rational cognitive reaction and irrational emotional reaction to stimuli of fashion bandwagon consumption. However, our results show that only the cognitive reaction path works, but the emotional reaction path does not. Put simply, trend conformity behavior is largely the result of consumers’ rational reactions rather than irrational reactions to the social influence stimuli of bandwagon consumption. Our study contributes to the research on luxury fashion consumption by introducing three new concepts, i.e., fashion trend conformity, trend perception, and demand amplification, to describe and theorize the characteristics of consumer behavioral patterns for luxury fashion products and new drivers and novel underlying mechanisms of consumer behaviors in the social media age. Our findings offer practical insights for retailers and manufacturers to promote fashion trend conformity behavior.