Narcissistic Consumers' Response to Self-focused Appeal Online Advertising: Evidence from Chinese Gen Y

Although self-focused appeal has become popular for online advertising in China and most of such advertisements focus on Gen Y, researches on the effect and mechanism of such advertisements are spares. To fill the gap, the presented study focuses on one typical individual psychological trait of Gen Y, i.e., narcissism, and aims to provide a conceptual framework which captures the moderating influence of product types, advertising types and different self (i.e., actual versus ideal self) in the relationship between consumers’ narcissistic trait and advertising persuasiveness. Two studies will be conducted to test the framework and relevant hypotheses, and the experimental design method will be adopted by these two studies ; the findings are expected to contribute to the consumer behavior and advertising literature regarding to narcissistic consumers and the effect of self-focused appeal.