An Exploration of Consumers' Satisfaction as Mediator in Purchasing Luxury Brand Goods

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the mediating construct of consumers' satisfaction in purchasing luxury brand products. Luxury brand products are expensive and often belong to the niche market. The market of luxury brand goods is growing rapidly worldwide in this era. In general, luxury brand goods represented high quality consumer goods that can enhance the reputation of luxury brands. Thus, consumers in a higher income group will tend to consider purchasing luxury brand goods as necessities. According to Lacroix and Jolibert (2017), the consumption of luxury brand goods has increased in recent years. The main objective of this research is to examine the relationship between the antecedent variables proposed for this study which include perceived value, brand image, brand credibility, brand loyalty and social influence on the motivation to purchase the luxury brand goods with consumers' satisfaction acts as a mediating role. Marketers constantly ponder whether consumers' purchasing decision to buy luxury brand goods can affect their satisfaction level? Thus, this study aims to determine young consumers' from higher income earning motivated to purchase luxury brand goods as well as understanding their view on their satisfaction. While there has been past research that investigated the relationship in purchase intention towards consumable products, but there is insufficient past research work done on investigating the mediating effects of consumers' satisfaction on such relationship particularly in Malaysian consumers context of purchasing luxury brand goods. Quantitative method was applied in this research. Primary data was collected through online questionnaire survey distribution. A total of 165 usable questionnaires were collected using a snowball sampling method. SPSS statistical was used to test the proposed framework. Statistical techniques employed in this study were descriptive analysis, reliability and normality test. In addition, PROCESS macro by Hayes was done to test the mediating effects of consumers' satisfaction. Finally, Pearson correlation analysis and Multiple Linear Regression test was performed to test the correlation between variables and its interactive relationship among other variables. The analysis confirmed the findings that all variables studied have a significant positive relationship with consumers purchase intention of luxury brand products. The results showed that consumers' satisfaction served as mediator between the relationship of consumers' purchase intention on perceived value, brand image, brand credibility, brand loyalty and social influence. Moreover, the findings between consumers' demographic analysis and purchase intention towards luxury brand goods revealed that consuming expensive goods is not necessarily limited to the wealthy consumers or consumers that have a high income. It is critical that marketers are not restricted by earlier statements that only consumers who appear to be wealthy, for instance, the person who is able to afford luxury brand goods is considered as the individual who is in high-income earning. From practical standpoint, this research can be beneficial for marketers to understand the purchase intention of consumers in order to establish a more appropriate marketing strategies to enhance the sales performance during Covid-19 pandemic, which seem to affect the intention of consumers' purchase towards luxury brand goods. However, marketers can increase their sales as well as profits by influencing the consumers' decision making of purchasing luxury brand goods positively. In addition, the ability to fulfill customers' needs will lead them to high satisfaction and this will accordingly lead to the firm success. Moreover, marketers of luxury brand goods must consider the situational factors when establishing the marketing strategies and program. From the theoretical perspective, the findings of this research contribute to the luxury branding and consumer behavior literature by examining not only the mainstream global luxury brands, but also the antecedent variables that affect consumers' satisfaction and intentions to buy luxury brand goods. Despite the best efforts to ensure rigorousness of this study, there are number of limitations that must be acknowledged. First, our data was cross-sectional, which limits our ability to make causal inferences. Thus, a longitudinal approach in future studies could cross-validate the current findings and provide additional support regarding the causality of the variables studied. Second, the use of self-report heightens the problem of common method variance which is always a potential threat to validity of our findings. While this study tried to correct these drawbacks through the elimination of social desirability bias, the drawbacks cannot be completely ruled out thus limit the generalizability of the findings. In future, research should attempt to include other endogenous variables such as motivation or culture that might affect the consumers behavior that are more indicative of purchasing luxury products. Additionally, comparison study between luxury brand product and counterfeits products can be considered to determine how it can affect consumers' buying intention for the original luxury brand. On top of that, more future research should focus on how young consumers' consumption behaviour for luxury brands changed due to pandemic faced by the world.