关键词: 社会排斥, 孤独感, 拒绝敏感性, 品牌依恋

Abstract: In recent years, many scholars have begun to focus on the effect of social exclusion on consumers’ brand preference, and investigate how the excluded consumers choose the products and brands to indirectly express their desire about establishing social connections with others. In fact, extant research also suggested that consumers not only used brand as an indirect mean of self-expression, but also took brand as the objects of social connection and emotional attachment. However, it is not yet clear whether social exclusion affects consumers’ brand attachment. According to interpersonal relationship theory, consumer-brand relationships are more like interpersonal relationships. A more intimate, continuous, and stable relationship can be formed through a personified expressive brand relationship based on interaction, and consumers show similar emotions (e.g., attachment) in relationships in brands as they do with other humans. Attachment can help individuals cope with adversity and stress, and it may be an important mechanism to increase adaptive respondse to the painful experience of social exclusion. Are consumers who has established attachment with brands more likely to successfully cope with the social exclusion? What is the underlying psychological mechanism and boundary condition?
In the current study, three experiments were conducted to explore the relationship between social exclusion and consumers’ brand attachment, as well as mediating (loneliness) and moderating (rejection sensitivity) variables of this relation by proposing a moderated mediation model. We used a variety of experimental materials, and chose different paradigms on manipulating social exclusion to exclude the effects of control variables (e.g., the type, quality, appearance, and taste of the experiment stimuli), and increase the external validity and robustness of the findings. The results showed that: (1) Social exclusion had a positive impact on brand attachment, that is, individuals with brand attachment were able to more effectively cope with social exclusion. (2) Loneliness mediated the relationship between social exclusion and brand attachment. (3) Rejection sensitivity not only moderated the effect of social exclusion on loneliness, but also moderated the mediating effect of loneliness. Specifically, for individuals with high rejection sensitivity, social exclusion had a stronger effect on loneliness, and loneliness mediated the relationship between social exclusion and brand attachment.
To sum up, this study links social exclusion with consumers’ brand attachment and reveals the mediating and moderating effects of social exclusion on brand attachment. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications. On the one hand, this study not only helps people to understand the relationship between consumers and brands, but also enriches past studies on social exclusion and brand attachment, which is conducive for scholars to carry out further research. On the other hand, this study provides a new perspective for individuals on how to deal with the negative impact of social exclusion and the negative experience of loneliness, as well as scientific methods for marketers on how to effectively develop brand attachment.

Key words: social exclusion, rejection sensitivity, brand attachment, loneliness