Demythologising Envy in Interdependent Culture: A Pseudo Luxury Consumption Perspective: An Abstract

Consumer desire for luxury is driving consumption of luxury branded products in developed and developing markets. Chinese consumers’ spending patterns have resulted in China becoming the most significant growth market for luxury in the world. However, Chinese consumers also make use of mimic branded items in their repertoire of luxury or pseudo-luxury goods. To explore the motivating forces of these consumers’ aspirations toward pseudo-luxury brands, this research was conducted in Beijing, China and among Chinese consumers. It incorporated in-depth interviews, projective methods, and non-participant observation. The data were analyzed using an iterative approach. The interpretation of data proceeded through a series of part-to-whole iterations that helped us to define concepts and draw out their theoretical implications. The findings reveal how envy as a tacit motive and the desire for identity reflects a change in the dynamics of Chinese consumer culture. As informants in this research, the Chinese consumer sees the elite’s lifestyles as vastly better than their own and seek the social prestige that luxury product purchase signifies. According to the findings, most Chinese customers have had unpleasant feelings, and it has been a continual emotion that they have been unable to escape or eliminate: a continuity process. They were unable to come out or employ any form of envy avoidance method. Envy is experienced in three stages: before using pseudo luxury things, while using or considering using pseudo luxury things, and after using pseudo luxury products, according to our research. The informants were unconcerned about how China’s elites have risen to such heights of wealth and luxury spending so swiftly. They also showed little hesitation about using pseudo luxury brands to obtain their desired identity of themselves as members of the affluent, contemporary, sophisticated elite. This contrasts with our theoretical understanding of Chinese values and motivations being a reflection of self-construal of interdependence and directed towards social harmony. More broadly, pseudo luxury consumption provides a vehicle for renegotiation of Chinese cultural values in a period of increasing abundance.