[citation needed] Guilt arises when individuals fail in meeting their own personal self-standards or when a conflict among what the theory of discrepancy calls "selves", emerges.
[5] The level of private self characterizing guilt leads to the definition of it as the negative emotional state associated with possible objection to one's actions, inaction, circumstances or intentions.
[7] The fact that consumers feel the need to satisfy this sort of hedonism, makes it impossible for them to completely stop their damaging consumption patterns; as a consequences companies want to actively reduce the dichotomy by acting as mediator between the various selves.
The distinction between the two phenomena comes from the fact that buyer's remorse involves the negative feelings emerging after an excessively expensive product or service, while GFC embraces three different areas of concern.
Moreover, buyer's remorse arises after the purchase is accomplished and companies can actively try to alleviate it through money back guarantees,[8] while the sense of guiltiness involving GFC is minimized at the root when firms engage themselves in more responsible production and distribution processes.
GFC has been influencing the luxury market seeing as even the wealthiest consumers are becoming suspicious with regard to brands promoting unethically produced products that are positioned as being elements of a fancy lifestyle.
[9] As a consequence, affluent consumers are putting global and social considerations as their first priority, strengthening the shift from conspicuous consumption to more conscientious buying habits.
[8] One popular way in which luxury brands are approaching and exploiting guilt-free consumption, is the attenuation of consumers' sense of guilt, hopefully followed by some sort of "license to indulge" in the desired product or service, through the promotion of charity organizations partnerships.
[1] In the Netherlands, a new generation of mobile phones, by the local firm Fairphone, provided smartphones which are manufactured without using minerals and with a special care of workers' welfare.