Investigating young customers’ retail purchase embarrassment

The purpose of this paper is to examine the inter-relationships between product category embarrassment, consumption contexts, individual’s attachment styles, and their combined effects on individual’s preference toward online and physical store channels while buying embarrassing products.

Experimental design was employed by taking a sample of young adult students.

The results of this study shows that embarrassing product class and social consumption context can potentially elicit embarrassment. Anxiously attached individuals are more prone to be embarrassed compared to the individuals adopting secure and avoidant attachment styles.

Value of the paper lies in empirically investigating the complex inter-relationships between product class-specific embarrassment, context specific embarrassment, individual’s attachment styles and buying channel selection.