You ain’t foolin’ me! Imposter judgments in luxury status signaling

Abstract

Past research has documented how consumers judge themselves as imposters when consuming luxury. By contrast, this research considers if and when consumers consider social others (i.e., signalers) to be imposters. We conceptualize imposter judgments along two dimensions: (1) perceived subjective wealth and (2) need for status. Study 1 finds that Black men are perceived to have lower wealth and lower need for status than White men even when engaging in the same status-signaling activity. Such judgments do not apply to Black women in hypothetical scenarios (Study 2). In more concrete scenarios, participants evaluated Black women as having lower wealth and lower need for status (Study 3), similar to how Black men are viewed. These experiments (N = 3,345) lead to the conclusion that Black and White luxury consumers are subject to inauthenticity judgements when signaling with luxury; however, these judgments manifest along different dimensions.