Rituals are valuable and symbolic activities that are increasingly becoming a tool not only for consumers to add color to their lives, but also as a novel marketing tool that is becoming a corporate marketing favorite. Rituals can be participated in by one person alone (i.e. individual rituals) or with others (i.e. group rituals). With the increasing number of people living alone and the structure being younger, a new era of living alone is gradually arriving. Under the effect of the COVID-19 epidemic, the group rituals that people living alone rely on to relieve stress and loneliness are limited, and individual rituals are emerging rapidly. However, previous studies have revealed more about the effect of group rituals, and few studies have compared the effects of group rituals and individual rituals on consumer product preference in combination with the number effect. Therefore, in order to further extend the application of rituals, this paper investigates the effect of ritual size on consumer product preference and its underlying mechanisms in the context of self-awareness theory, and dissects the corresponding boundary conditions from the perspective of imaginary audience.

Two experiments were designed for this study: Experiment 1 aimed to test the effect of ritual size on consumer product preference and the mediating role of private self-awareness, and Experiment 2 aimed to test the moderating role of imaginary audience. Both experimental studies were conducted in the form of questionnaires, with validated scales selected to develop into question items, and ANOVA, correlation analysis and hierarchical regression analysis were used to empirically test the theoretical hypotheses. The findings show that there are significant differences in the effect of ritual size on consumer product preference, with consumers participating in individual rituals (vs. group rituals) being more likely to choose niche products (vs. mass products). Ritual size influences consumer product preference by awakening different levels of private self-awareness. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by imaginary audience: For consumers with low imaginary audience, individual rituals increase preference for niche products more than group rituals; but for consumers with high imaginary audience, this effect is not significant. In sum, this study examines the mediating role of private self-awareness and the moderating role of imaginary audience, enriching the research on ritual marketing and product preference and extending the applicability of self-awareness theory.

The main contributions of this paper are as follows: Firstly, it expands the research on ritual application in the field of marketing. Previous studies tend to investigate the effect of rituals on intergroup relations from a group perspective, while this paper combines both individual and group perspectives to investigate the effect of ritual size on consumer product preference, and applies the number effect to the study of rituals in the field of marketing, enabling companies to give new meaning to their products or brands through rituals, enhancing brand well-being and thus building long-term and stable relationships with consumers. Secondly, it further enriches the self-awareness theory. Private self-awareness is derived from the self-awareness theory and is one of its classifications. Through the execution of rituals, this paper finds that the series of actions has the effect of enhancing self-awareness, which is a possible scenario following the various antecedents proposed in previous studies, expanding the scope of private self-awareness and enriching the self-awareness theory. Thirdly, it finds that imaginary audience moderates the effect of ritual size on consumer product preference, further clarifying the boundary conditions for the effect and providing insights for companies to design rituals that are consistent with their product positioning.