Abstract:

The research focuses on the influence of social exclusion on consumers' beauty product spending. Social exclusion would threaten people's basic need of belongingness, while beauty product can help people improve their physical attractiveness and reestablish social connections. So we proposed that excluded consumers are more likely to adopt beauty spending as a coping strategy. Due to the greater importance of physical attractiveness to women, the proposed effect would be stronger in female participants. From four experiments we demonstrated that social exclusion would enhance women's beauty spending tendency. When being excluded, female participants would regard beauty spending as more meaningful, be willing to spend more on beauty products, and show greater willingness to pay for beauty products. The mediating role of focus level and the moderating role of the social function manipulation were also tested to reveal the underlying mechanism.

Key words: Social exclusion, gender, beauty spending