Face Gain and Face Loss in Restaurant Consumers’ Brand Advocate Behaviors

Face plays a key role in guiding consumers’ consumptions in social settings. The purpose of this research is to understand how the desire to gain face and the fear to lose face affect consumers’ self-brand congruence and brand advocate behaviors toward their favorite restaurant brands. Using structural equation modeling to analyze the survey data, the results indicated (1) that ideal-self attainability encouraged the desire to gain face while discouraging the fear to lose face, (2) that the desire to gain face exerted positive effects on positive word-of-mouth and negative avoidance through actual self-brand congruence, and (3) that the fear to lose face exerted negative effects on positive word-of-mouth through actual self-brand congruence