The Mediating Effect of Consumption Value on the Relationship between Consumption Tendency and Purchase Behavior Intention, for Beauty Devices: Analyses across Generations

In the present study, as a result of the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the market for beauty devices for skin care, which collapsed due to the wearing of masks, has expanded, and different consumption patterns have been observed in the main consumers, Millennial and Gen Z (hereafter MZ) and Generation X, due to the increased use of SNS and the economic recession. The polarisation of consumption between MZ and Generation X is intensifying in various consumption patterns, so we studied to see the mediating effect of consumption value in the relationship between purchasing behaviour based on the consumption tendency that appears in MZ and Generation X. We conducted our study totally 510 participants who belonged to either of those three generations, with willing to purchase beauty device products, and analyzed their data using SPSS 25.0. For consumption tendency, its subfactors were trend orientation, brand orientation, impulse buying, and plannedness. Meanwhile, the consumption value’s subfactors were classified into ethical value, functional value, social value, and economic value. Our analyses rendered the following findings. First, among consumption-value factors, the functional value was significantly mediating the association between plannedness (subfactor of consumption tendency) and purchase behavior. Meanwhile, the trend orientation and brand orientation’s effects on purchase behavior intention were mediated by functional and social value. Mean while, the cross-generational analyses showed the follows. First, for MZ consumers, the higher propensity of impulsive buying did not lead to more prioritization of economic value. For generation X, on the contrary, more impulsive-buying propensity was positively associated with emphasis on economic value. Such findings suggest that, further studies will be needed to explain why and how the impulsive buying’s association with economic value appeared differently between MZ and Generation X. Meanwhile, the present findings will serve as crucial marketing data, through which they will be able to develop beauty devices meeting consumer needs, and understand purchase behavior’s main determinants with account on variation in consumption tendency value among different generations.