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The purpose of this paper is to study the underlying relationships among two distinct forms of consumer values, namely, instrumental and terminal values, fashion consciousness and behavioural intentions in the context of online fashion apparel retail sector.

A conceptual model and subsequent measurement scale were developed, grounded on in-depth review of the extensive literature and validated with customers engaged in online shopping of fashion apparels. The model was empirically examined, and a total of 395 responses were gathered from an online survey administered at a northeastern university in India. The model was validated using structural equation modelling, and a two-step approach suggested by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) was used to evaluate the measurement and structural models for the research.

The results of the study indicate that instrumental and terminal values significantly affect fashion consciousness, and fashion consciousness has a significant impact on behavioural intentions as well. The research brings out that fashion consciousness acts as a partial mediator between instrumental/terminal values and behavioural intentions. It is noteworthy that compared to terminal values instrumental values display a greater influence on both the variables fashion consciousness and behavioural intentions.

The conclusion of present research will notably assist the fashion retailers, online marketing researchers and experts understand the importance of terminal and instrumental values in increasing fashion consciousness, leading to strategically design campaigns for promoting and instigate consumers’ positive behavioural intentions in the best interest of the online fashion retail sector.

The study results provide suggestions for competitive marketing strategies for online fashion companies operating in the emerging markets like India.

The present study is first of its kind attempt to use Rokeach’s (1973) two-dimensional measure of human values, in order to discover the terminal and instrumental values relationship and their influence on fashion consciousness and behavioural intentions in the online fashion retail industry.

Fashion clothing has always been an interesting area for scholarly research on consumer behavior. This paper seeks to gain a better understanding of the youth involvement with fashion clothing in the Egyptian context. Accordingly, the paper considers the Egyptian consumers’ attitude toward fashion involvement by investigating how fashion consciousness and materialism serve as main antecedents of fashion clothing involvement, while also determining the impact of fashion clothing involvement on fashion clothing purchase involvement. This paper aims to test an extended and adapted theoretical model of fashion clothing involvement in Egypt.

Using non-probabilistic convenience sample, a survey method was used, and 270 valid questionnaires were collected.

The hypothesized antecedents were found to influence fashion clothing involvement among young Egyptian consumers, which in turn significantly affect its purchasing. Moreover, materialism was also found to partially meditate the relationship between fashion consciousness and fashion involvement. On the other hand, the hypothesized gender role as a moderator between all variables of the study was not supported.

Using a wider population is one avenue future research seeking to replicate this study can pursue. Specifically, because the sample consisted of university students, generalizing the results to non-students can be restricted. Likewise, findings are mainly related to fashion clothing; hence, extending the model to include other product categories can provide more support for the results.

As the results confirmed that there is a partial significant positive impact of fashion consciousness on fashion clothing involvement via materialism, the paper provides practical implications for fashion marketers to achieve successful communication with fashion-conscious and materialistic young Egyptian consumers. The aim is to develop strategies that are consistent with consumers’ values and communicate appeals to their aspirational lifestyle.

This paper contributes to the limited number of the published manuscripts on the fashion clothing marketing sector in Egypt. There is a void in literature related the investigation of fashion clothing involvement in the developing countries. Accordingly, this paper fills this gap by examining the fashion clothing consumption behavior of young Egyptian students in Cairo University. To the best of the author’s knowledge, it is among the first to investigate the antecedents and motives related to fashion clothing involvement and its purchases among young consumers in the Egyptian context. The paper develops a comprehensive model of fashion clothing involvement to highlight the relationships between fashion involvement and Fashion consciousness, materialism, and fashion clothing purchase-involvement. The paper also contributes to the research by exploring materialism as a mediator between fashion consciousness and fashion involvement constructs, in addition to exploring the gender role as a moderator between all constructs of the study. The study makes theoretical contribution to the body of knowledge around young Egyptian consumers’ fashion clothing involvement and purchase behavior toward luxury fashion clothes, which may be extended to other similar Arab non-Western developing countries. Moreover, it offers managerial insights for establishing effective communications with this potentially lucrative market segment.

This study seeks to examine the fashion consciousness of young consumers in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, and to explain the impact of gender and education on fashion consciousness of young fashion consumers.

A survey design was used to collect the data and 215 youngsters below 25 years of age were selected for the study. A structured questionnaire was used to examine the fashion consciousness of respondents. Three factors of fashion consciousness were suggested by exploratory factor analysis procedure, and they were established for further analysis based on the results of confirmatory factor analysis. The study tested three hypotheses to examine the degree of fashion consciousness and the impact of gender and education on fashion consciousness.

The survey results showed that respondents have a fair level of fashion consciousness and their fashion consciousness was affected by the gender and education. It was highlighted that the fashion consciousness is context‐dependent and the fashion consciousness of young consumers in Sri Lanka is mainly related to their consciousness about Western fashions.

The study stresses the inseparability of fashion consumers' mental status and his/her socioeconomic and cultural surrounding, especially in the post‐colonial context.

Fashion consciousness is an important consumers' attribute affecting their purchase of luxury products. The existing research mainly focuses on certain factors of fashion consciousness in fashion markets. This research investigates the psychological and social factors of fashion consciousness in the luxury fashion market. Specifically, we analyse how these factors affect fashion consciousness and purchase behaviour among consumers in three age groups of 18-23, 24-29 and 30-35. We find that self-monitoring and self-concept affect fashion consciousness among consumers of the age group of 18-23. We also show that media exposure has a positive effect on fashion consciousness in the age groups of 24-29 and 30-35. Accordingly, we suggest that retailers come up with proper advertising messages to influence the self-monitoring and self-concept of young consumers around the twenties. We also recommend selecting appropriate channels to enhance the exposure of luxury fashion information to consumers in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impacts of Chinese young consumers’ traits (fashion leadership, quality consciousness, price consciousness, environmental consciousness and social media usage) as the external factors on their behavioral intention toward using clothing subscription rental services.

Quantitative research was conducted, and empirical data were collected from 255 Chinese college students. Structural equation modeling was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses.

The study offered convincing evidence that fashion leadership, price consciousness and social media usage are the three main drivers of Chinese young consumers’ favorable attitudes toward clothing subscription rental services, which together with social norms further lead to their intention to use clothing subscription rental services. Contrary to expectations, the study showed that consumers’ quality consciousness and environmental consciousness have no significant impact on consumer attitudes toward clothing subscription rental services. Moreover, the findings of the study demonstrated the impact of attitude and subjective norms on Chinese young consumers’ intention to use clothing subscription rental services.

This study contributes to the literature by integrating additional factors (fashion leadership, quality consciousness, price consciousness, consumer environmental knowledge, social media usage) into the traditional theory of reasoned action model to investigate how Chinese young consumers’ characteristics impact their attitudes and how their attitudes and subjective norms impact their intention toward using clothing subscription rental services.

This paper aims to examine the relationships among two distinct yet interconnected forms of value orientations, namely, terminal and instrumental values, brand consciousness and behavioral intentions. This study validated the conceptual model for branded fashion apparel consumption in an emerging market, e.g. India.

The research design followed a two-step approach to test the measurement and structural models for partial least squares structural equation modeling with SmartPLS (v.3.0) as recommended by Anderson and Gerbing (1988).

The results illustrated that both the instrumental and terminal values influence brand consciousness and, consequently, brand consciousness had an impact on behavioral intentions for fashion apparel consumption. Instrumental values had a greater influence on brand consciousness and behavioral intentions than terminal values. Brand consciousness mediated the relationship between instrumental/terminal values and behavioral intentions.

This study defined two value orientations (i.e. instrumental versus terminal) using cross-sectional data from an emerging market. Future studies may examine the research findings’ generalizability using diverse data sets (longitudinal and cross-sectional) and evaluate the value orientation and customers’ favorable behavioral intentions for luxury fashion consumption.

This study provides insights into luxury marketers and practitioners to understand the contribution of instrumental and terminal values on brand consciousness and behavioral intentions for luxury fashion apparel. The findings would assist in developing marketing strategies for an emerging market, i.e. India.

With the rapid proliferation of materialism, the Indian market has witnessed the dawn of a new era of luxury fashion acceptance. The research offers evidence that in emerging markets such as India, consumers exhibit value orientation toward luxury brands while holding a sense of fashion involvement in their consumption behavior.

This study is a pioneering attempt to understand the relationships between the value orientation, namely, instrumental and terminal values and their underlying influence on brand consciousness and behavioral intentions toward fashion apparel. Rokeach’s (1973) two-dimensional value dichotomy was adapted to understand luxury apparel consumption in an emerging market context, specifically India.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customer involvement in product development creates an emotional connection, satisfaction, and subsequent loyalty toward fast-fashion retailers across high vs low fashion-conscious consumers.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gain understandings of the impacts of customer involvement. To explore customers’ general perceptions of fast-fashion retailers, a focus group interview with 11 US students was conducted. Data for a hypothesis test were obtained from 306 US female consumers and analyzed through structural equational modeling.

The findings underscored the relational benefits of involving customers in product development and the substantial moderating impact of female customers’ fashion consciousness.

The study’s findings support that the customer-brand relationship can be solidified by proactively involving customers in product development. This is beyond benefits derived from leveraging customers’ operant resources in product innovation. Thus, apparel retailers should take such interactive opportunities to build relationships with customers. Also, involving customers in product development can be a critical way for fast-fashion retailers to establish an emotional bond with and loyalty from consumers with a low level of fashion consciousness. Thus, any digital opinion platform designed to foster customer involvement should be managed with the customer-brand relationship in mind.

This study contributes to the emerging body of literature on customer involvement in product development in fast-paced retailing by elucidating the psychological process through which their participation strengthens the customer-brand relationship manifested in emotional, evaluative, and behavioral responses to the brand, and by identifying a consumer attribute that fortifies this process.

The purpose of this paper is to identify personality clusters among consumers of Generation Y in India using the Big Five personality traits and profile these clusters on the basis of their levels of fashion consciousness, inclination toward status consumption and materialistic tendencies.

A self-completion questionnaire was administered to 751 respondents from Generation Y (born between 1980 and 2000) using mall-intercept approach. The questionnaire included demographic items and measures of the Big Five personality traits, fashion consciousness, status consumption and materialism. A two-step cluster analysis, using hierarchical and nonhierarchical clustering, was conducted on each respondent’s factor scores on the five dimensions of the Big Five. Later, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was applied to identify differences in the levels of fashion consciousness, inclination toward status consumption and materialistic tendencies of the clusters.

Four personality clusters were identified, i.e. Conventionalists (N = 95, 12.64 per cent), Anxious Achievers (N = 207, 27.56 per cent), Introverts (N = 204, 27.16 per cent) and Positivists (N = 245, 33.82 per cent). MANOVA revealed significant differences among clusters pertaining to their levels of fashion consciousness, status consumption and materialistic tendencies.

Results suggest that the personality clusters are not homogeneous, and fashion marketers must bear in mind the differences within the cohort of Generation Y while planning their promotion and communication strategies.

The value of this study lies in integrating the widely researched constructs of the Big Five personality traits, fashion consciousness, status consumption and materialism into one holistic study, thereby offering useful insights into the fashion shopping behavior of young Indian adults.

Over the years, it has been without doubt that appearance consciousness is the privilege of women. In the past two decades, gender has become equivocal due to the diffusion of sexual boundaries. This has induced changes in male consciousness on fashion. However, there has been limited research that investigates the antecedents and consequences of fashion consciousness. This research aims to explore the potential factors that influence fashion consciousness and their impacts on the buying intention and behavior of men. We have conducted an empirical study on Generation Y male fashion consumers in Hong Kong. Our findings show that advancement of information technology, self-identity ambiguity, changing work practices of men, and media influence are four key factors that affect male fashion consciousness. Our results also reveal that fashion consciousness has a positive impact on the buying intention and behaviors of men. We recommend that fashion retailers allocate organizational resources on advertising and promotions to attract the interest of men towards their products

This study examines fashion consciousness among Chinese, Japanese and US teenagers. The purpose of the study was to examine similarities and differences in attitudes toward fashion across these three markets. The results show that significant differences in fashion consciousness exist between Chinese teens and their Japanese and US counterparts. At the same time, the US and Japanese teens show similarities in their attitudes toward fashion. The findings may support the idea of market differences in fashion consciousness between developed countries and less developed countries. While there are opportunities for fashion merchants to benefit from market similarities, an understanding of the idiosyncrasies underlying motivations of teen fashion in each market is needed.