Unsustainable Luxury and Negative Word-Of-Mouth: The Role of Shame and Consumers’ Cultural Orientation

This research shows that messages describing unsustainable versus sustainable luxury products elicit anticipated shame, which, in turn, leads to negative word-of-mouth about that product’s manufacturer. Our results demonstrate that shame induced by messages featuring unsustainable luxury manufacturing practices increases (decreases) negative word-of-mouth for consumers with a collectivistic (individualistic) cultural orientation.