The Influence of Guilt on Preference towards Imported Products: Focusing on Chinese Consumers

Abstract

Purpose - This paper investigates how consumers' feelings of guilt affect their preference for imported products. Choosing imported products over domestic products reveals that consumers' motivation is to improve themselves. This study also tries to examine whether choosing imported goods has a restorative effect on feelings of guilt. Design/methodology/approach - We ran two experiments to test our hypothesis. Participants were recruited in China and the data analysis software used in this study was SPSS 26.0 for analysis. Findings - The results show that consumers with guilt feelings are more likely to import products than to consume domestic products, the second result shows that choosing imported products has an effect on guilt. In addition, consumers with low self-efficacy in a guilty condition prefer imported products to domestic products. Research implications or Originality - Based on previous research that focused on how guilt activates consumers' self-improvement goals, this study shows that when consumers experience feelings of guilt, they prefer imported products to reduce their negative feelings. These findings are discussed in the light of their implications for research on consumer self-motivation and ways of coping with it.