Do luxury brands successfully entice consumers? The role of bandwagon effect

The purpose of this paper is to explore the underlying motivations for bandwagon luxury brand consumption among consumers of an emergent market by empirically investigating the effects of consumers’ interdependent and independent orientations on their personality traits, such as conformity, need for uniqueness and status consumption, which in turn affect their bandwagon luxury brand consumption.

A paper-based survey method is used to collect data from more than 400 Pakistani consumers indulging in bandwagon luxury brand consumption. The model is estimated through structural equation modeling.

The results show that individuals’ personality traits significantly affect their bandwagon luxury brand consumption. Further, the results suggest that the relationship between individuals’ interdependent/independent orientation and bandwagon luxury brand consumption is partially/fully mediated by their personality traits.

These findings offer insights into consumers’ perceptions about bandwagon luxury brand consumption and provide useful managerial implications for the managers/marketers to build reputable luxury brands.

This research contributes to the literature by investigating the mediating role of consumers’ personality traits in the relationship between their interdependent/independent orientation and bandwagon luxury brand consumption behavior. There is scant literature on bandwagon luxury brand consumption, especially in the context of collectivistic society where the proposed framework has been empirically tested.