Neural Mechanism of How Logos Affect Luxury Purchase Decisions—Insights from Conspicuous Value

Luxury is a special kind of products which contains immense psychological value. Some consumers, especially those poseurs, pay decent sums of money on luxuries to purely satisfy their conspicuous intention. Logos have the direct bearing on conspicuous value, which largely influences luxury consumption behavior. However, there is no existing work investigating the neural mechanism of how logos impact the purchase decisions of luxury consumers. To address this problem, a 3 logo types (no logo vs. pattern logo vs. name logo) ERP experiment was implemented. The behavioral analysis indicated that name logo and pattern logo promoted the purchase. The ERP experiment showed that the two groups with name and pattern logos yielded remarkable smaller N2 than the no logo group; the name logo group yielded smaller N2 than the pattern logo group in trend, however, such difference was not statistical significant; the name logo and pattern logo groups elicited significant larger LPP than the no logo group; furthermore, the name logo group elicited remarkable larger LPP than the pattern logo group. Combined with the questionnaire investigation, our results suggested that poseurs believe logos bring luxury goods more conspicuous value because of easy reorganization. The increase of conspicuous value makes poseurs feel: 1) smaller value conflict between gains (conspicuous value) and losses (price), which is reflected by the smaller amplitudes of N2; 2) more pleasure (stronger motivational emotion arousal), which is represented by the larger value of LPP. According to the regression analysis, purchase rate was negatively correlated to N2 amplitude and positively correlated to LPP wave. Thus, the purchase intentions of buying luxury goods with logos are promoted by the combined action of smaller cognitive conflict and higher motivational emotion arousal. It gives us a great insight that N2 and LPP may be used as indicators to predict consumer purchasing decisions.