The salesperson is usually the most curtail link between the consumer and the company behind the product. Peoples vanity is a characteristic that deeply ingrained in their behavior, influencing all of their decisions in life. It is also indispensable in their consumption behavior as well: sometimes, vanity can intrigue impulsive purchasing desires; while at other times, it leads to a more rational evaluation of products. Therefore, studying whether sales can stimulate people's vanity to drive business growth is highly worthwhile. In this study, we try to perceive peoples vanity level and their reaction to different types of salespersons attitudes; in this process, our intention is to study whether salespersons can stimulate peoples vanity to have impulsive consumption behavior. In order to obtain the information, we set up some basic questions and a vanity test in the first half of the questionnaire, and in the second half, we designed different consumption scenarios for 3 groups of participants, the salesperson in each of the scenario have varying attitudes that guides them to purchase a expensive product. We conclude that both salespersons attitude and peoples vanity level both have relationships with peoples consumption behaviors, however, they affects peoples final consumption decision separately. Although our results conflict with our original hypothesis, we still clarified that how purchasing decisions and behaviors are influenced when people buy luxury or more expensive items. This might help some retail industry to better understand consumers behavior, and for consumer to recognize behaviors that are unconsciously influenced.
Chen et al. (Tue,) studied this question.