Unveiling the impact of technology-driven factors on conspicuous consumption: a time-lagged investigation

The present study objective is to operationalize an elaboration likelihood model to integrate five technology-driven factors- online promotion, stickiness, social commerce, tie strength, and recommendation agents- to determine their underlying influence on shoppers' conspicuous online consumption. Furthermore, the research explores the moderating effect of the material self to explain buyer behavior. The data was collected through a time-lagged approach from 612 regular online fashion shoppers. SmartPLS is used to perform partial least square structural equation modeling which enabled model validation. The results confirmed that all five factors are significant predictors of conspicuous online consumption and that compulsive buying mediates the relationships. Moreover, it is revealed that the material self positively moderates the interactions between online promotion, stickiness, social commerce, tie strength, and compulsive online buying but does not significantly moderate the interactions between recommendation agents and compulsive online buying. The study offers a significant and timely contribution to facilitate researchers, and fashion marketers in developing suitable e-tailing strategies.