Face saving, materialism, and desire for unique apparel products: differences among three Asian countries

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of face saving and materialism on the desire for unique apparel products and to examine the country moderating effects in three Asian countries, Korea, China, and India. A total of 612 usable data-sets were collected in Korea, China, and India from one university in a metropolitan city of each country. Face saving and materialism were found to serve as important antecedents for desire for unique consumer products (DUCP). A country moderating effect was confirmed between materialism and DUCP, but analysis revealed mixed results across the three countries. A materialism-DUCP link was found to be positive only in India, but negative in China. A negative link in Korea was insignificant. This study is one of the earliest attempts to verify antecedents (i.e. face saving and materialism) of DUCP in three Asian countries and to discover that the materialism-DUCP link is not always positive across countries.

Keywords:

• consumers’ desire for unique apparel products
• materialism
• face saving
• Asia
• country moderating effect