【正文】 ect to public scrutiny because they expect others to evaluate their decision more favourably if they choose variety. VARIATION IN DESIRED BRAND BENEFITS AND CHOICE An ample body of studies indicates that the awareness that others will observe one’s decision induces impressionmanagement concerns that lead individuals to alter their consumption choices. Experimental evidence has confirmed that reference groups influence both individual brand and product choices. The benefits desired by consumers in a brand have been found to play a role in this choice because they add to the selfexpressive and symbolic value of the brand for the buyer, and thus to that buyer’s impression management efforts. Batra and Homer further demonstrated that such beliefs have a greater impact on intentions and actual behaviour (behaviour that others can observe, such as choice) than on brand attitudes (which are private and unobservable). In situations where reference groups are salient, purchase and consumption are thus at least partly motivated by a need for public selfpresentation and impression management. Some brand benefits specifically pertain to socially visible aspects of a brand, eg how classy, trendy or fashionable it is widely perceived to be or how cheap, valueformoney it is. Accordingly, the desire to obtain or avoid these benefits ought to be greater in consumption occasions in which a reference group is salient, ie where impression management needs are higher. Past research has indeed shown that social brand benefits of clothing are more important in situations in which the oute is visible to others. Similarly, the social and valueformoney benefits consumers seek in snack brands have been found to affect choice. Just as different reference groups can make different selfconceptions more salient for an individual,38 the absence of these groups could also influence the salience of brand benefits. In a situation where the brand is being chosen privately for selfconsumption, greater salience of more selfcentred benefits such as emotional or health benefits might lead to differential effects on brand choice. CONSUMER PERSONALITY AND BRAND CHOICE VARIATION Beyond the substantial body of research indicating that the influence of others (interpersonal influence) affects individual behaviour, researchers have argued that these reference group effects will be stronger for certain more influenceable individuals, characterised by an individual difference construct sometimes called the susceptibility to interpersonal influence. Consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence has been conceptualised as a general personality trait that varies across individuals and is related to other individual traits and characteristics. In his 1968 review, McGuire concluded that ‘a(chǎn) person’s relative influenceability in one situation tends to have a significant positive relationship to his or her influenceability in a range of other social situations’.Social psychologists distinguish between informational influence, in which the group provides information about the issue in question, and normative influence, the motivation to mesh with the group’s standards and et al. reported the development of a twodimensional scale to measure such interpersonal influenceability, including a normative and an informational dimension. The authors defined the construct as: ‘the need to identify with or enhance one’s image in the opinion of significant Others through the acquisition and use of products and brands, the willingness to conform to the expectations of others regarding purchase decisions, and/or the tendency to learn about products and services by observing others or seeking information from others.’ A considerable number of articles from psychological and consumer research have investigated the tendency of individuals to conform to group norms or to modify their judgment based upon others’ evaluations but