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The current research explored both pre-purchase and post-purchase factors of consumer behaviour. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships that may exist among consumers’ perceptions of perishability, scarcity, low price, attitudes, impulse buying, post-purchase emotions, and product returns within the context of the fast fashion environments.

A total of 246 usable questionnaires completed by female undergraduate students, who made purchases and product returns at fast fashion retailers, were analysed in SPSS and AMOS 23.0. Structural equation modelling was employed to test the hypotheses.

Consumers who are attracted to scarcity due to limited supply and scarcity due to time, referred to as perceived perishability, have a positive attitude towards the fast fashion retailers in which products are presented in scarce environments. Likewise, consumers have a positive attitude towards fast fashion retailers due to low priced merchandises they offer. Consequently, consumers who have a positive attitude towards the fast fashion retailers are likely to purchase products from them impulsively. Moreover, impulse buying behaviour positively influenced some negative post-purchase emotional responses, which in turn positively influenced product returns in the fast fashion environments.

The results of the current study contribute to a greater understanding of apparel-related consumer behaviour in general. A theory formation of fast fashion consumer behaviour from acquisition to disposal can be drawn from the results of this study. Because some fast fashion retailers do sell clothing for both men and women, researchers could compare the responses of males and females to examine differences in consumer behaviour related to demographic characteristics. In the future, an examination of actual emotional responses and return behaviour would be beneficial for a more complete understanding of post-purchase consumer behaviour.

Fast fashion retailers could use this information to carefully design shopping environments that induce impulse buying behaviour because it may result in product returns. Fast fashion retailers need to understand the causes of the return behaviour, whether consumer related or product related, to better meet the needs of their target market. Return policies must be considered.

This research is the first to examine the impact of negative emotions following consumers’ impulse buying on product returns in the fast fashion retail environments.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship that exists, if any, between employee appearance and organizational identification in the context of apparel retail stores.

Salespeople from a variety of apparel retail stores were interviewed using a semi‐structured technique.

Salespeople's level of identification was related to the congruency they perceived to exist between their identity and store's identity. Those who identified with their employment organization felt uncomfortable when the apparel items they wore to work were inconsistent with the store's identity. Additionally, those who identified with their employment organization did not feel uncomfortable wearing apparel items from that store to engage in activities outside of work.

The study contributes to the body of literature on employee‐organization identification by providing evidence of a relationship between appearance and identification. Future research is needed to examine the relationship with a random sample of employees from additional employment contexts.

Participants indicated that their level of identification was positively related to their level of job satisfaction, which in turn was negatively related to their intention to leave. Apparel retail store managers may be able to use appearance‐related factors to select employment candidates who will most likely experience identification with the apparel retail store. Furthermore, potential apparel retail salespeople should be encouraged to consider image congruency when applying for employment.

In this study, a first effort was made to investigate the previously hypothesized relationship between employee appearance and employee‐organization identification.

The purpose of this paper is to compare personal characteristics of buyers of rubber charity bracelets with those of non‐buyers so that a deeper understanding of the success of this cause‐related fashion product may be attained.

A convenience sample of 244 individuals in Texas and Iowa was gathered via a survey method. Items on the questionnaire were contained within three sections: assessing participants' level of fashion involvement and celebrity involvement; participants' attitudes toward the consumption of cause‐related fashion products; and demographic information.

Results from this study indicated individuals who purchased rubber charity bracelets were more involved with fashion and celebrities than individuals who did not purchase rubber charity bracelets and that those who purchased the bracelets had purchased significantly more cause‐related fashion products than those who had not purchased any bracelets. Purchasers of bracelets were significantly less involved with the cause than those who had not purchased any bracelets. Purchasers did not have a significantly more positive attitude toward purchasing cause‐related fashion products than those who had not bought any bracelets.

The predominately female sample of young adults may not be representative of the average US consumer.

This study provides useful information to manufacturers and sellers of cause‐related products. Future efforts to manufacture and sell cause‐related products should focus on developing products that incorporate fashion trends with celebrity endorsers.

This paper provides useful information for organizations wishing to create similarly successful cause‐related fashion products.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, this study aims to understand whether and how sales employee clothing style would influence consumers' perceptions of store image through their expectations of service quality. Second, this study hopes to uncover how fashion orientation would influence the aforementioned relationship.

A 3 (formality of employee clothing: formal vs moderate vs casual) × 2 (level of fashion orientation: low vs high) between‐subject experiment design was conducted. Data were collected from 105 university students in a laboratory setting.

Results indicated that formality of employee clothing (i.e. formal business, moderate, or casual attire) served as a cue in the retail environment for consumers to make inferences about the service quality expected to be provided by the sales employee. Furthermore, formality of employee clothing both directly and indirectly influenced consumers' perceptions of store image.

This study adds to existing literature by uncovering the moderating role of fashion orientation in consumers' service quality expectations and confirms the function of service quality as an antecedent to store image.

Retailers should pay attention to the design of their salespeople's clothing because different clothing styles draw forth different evaluations from customers about the service quality provided in retail stores.

This study investigates the role of clothing formality in influencing consumers' service quality expectations.

This study aims to examine the characteristics of ethnographic textile collectors and compare them with the literature regarding fair trade consumers to explore the existence of a possible consumption constellation between collecting and fair trade purchasing.

Purposive sampling was used for the study as it maximized the attainment of significant information related to ethnographic textile collecting. Qualitative data from ethnographic textile collectors (n=12) were collected.

Results suggested that collectors were interested in purchasing high quality, authentic products that expressed their identity and individuality. These are similarities shared with fair trade consumers. Furthermore, collectors' motives to help artisans overcome poverty were evident; a similar value guides fair trade purchasing.

The predominantly female sample of academics may not be representative of the average ethnographic textile collector.

Understanding the multiplicity of products and activities representative of one consumer group's lifestyle is beneficial to both for‐profit and non‐profit organizations in terms of product promotion or donation solicitation. The understanding of these consumers' lifestyle can, in turn, help marketers design and implement effective advertising and fundraising campaigns that improve the livelihood and wellbeing of excluded and disadvantaged people in developing countries.

The paper furthers the knowledge base and understanding of these different consumer segments by providing evidence of a consumption constellation between ethnographic textile collectors and fair trade consumers.

The purpose of this study was to explore strategies used by successful female entrepreneurs to manage the challenges of running a small apparel business.

A qualitative research design was used. Primary and secondary data were collected on small business in three countries: Russia, South Africa and Thailand. In-depth interviews were conducted with a total of 11 female small apparel business owners. Businesses ranged from tailoring and custom clothing shops, to small-scale design and production, as well as small apparel retail stores.

Three emergent themes highlight the similarities and differences that surfaced across the participants’ narratives. Key issues within the thematic areas point to the need for these women to be creative in finding resources to start and grow their small apparel businesses, and to manage the competition that they face within this industry.

It is difficult to generalize the findings of this study beyond the sample. Implications of the findings for understanding the needs of female apparel entrepreneurs and small business owners are considered.

Despite the significance of women to the apparel industry as well as small business ownership, thus far, the role of women as apparel entrepreneurs and small business owners has been under-examined in the literature. This study offers insight into what it is like for women seeking to succeed as apparel entrepreneurs and small business owners.

This paper aims to explore a theoretical relationship among perceptions of consumer social class, the perceived legitimacy of customer requests for service and the delivery of intangible services. It focuses the discussion on service firm encounters with non-traditional consumers seeking to purchase from luxury brands.

The paper reviews the literature for current trends in strategies of luxury brands and characteristics of evolving global and Asian consumer markets for luxury and neo-luxury goods and draws a theoretic model with propositions.

Evidence suggests that service providers can improve efforts to expand services to the newly rich and trading-up neo-luxury consumer markets by focusing on the intangible elements of the service delivery system. Particular emphasis is placed on enhancing employee treatment of neo-luxury customers during service encounters by understanding the influence of employee perceptions of consumer social class and evaluations of the perceived legitimacy of customer requests for service.

The paper contributes to the theoretical discussion in luxury brand management by suggesting that employees are influenced by impressions of customer worth and other attributes when determining responses to customers during service encounters. Implications for practitioners and future research directions for academics based on the framework are presented.

In response to the impact of market globalization and concerns over the universality of marketing measures, this study seeks to examine the measurement invariance of consumers' price perception scales cross‐culturally with samples drawn from four Eastern Asian countries, i.e. China, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA). In addition, this study further examines the differences and similarities in the mean levels of consumers' price perceptions across the four samples.

A convenience sample of undergraduate college students was employed. A total of 958 students with business‐related majors completed a questionnaire in Beijing, China; Seoul, South Korea; Tainan, Taiwan; and Chonburi, Thailand.

Having established psychometric properties and demonstrated the partial scalar invariance of measurements and structural parameters, the results indicated that the consumers' price perception scale containing five dimensions (i.e. price‐quality schema, prestige sensitivity, value consciousness, sale proneness, and price mavenism) appears to be useful in Eastern Asian cultures. In addition, results of latent mean comparison revealed not only some similarities but also differences related to the five dimensions of price across the four Eastern Asian samples.

The main limitation is the issue of generalizability of the findings because of the use of student samples.

This study is among the first to examine cross‐cultural invariance of consumers' price perception within Eastern Asian countries using MGCFA.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of apparel care label information presentation formats (i.e. symbols only, text only, and the combination) and the individual trait of need for cognition on consumers' confidence in and risk perceptions about the post‐purchase activity of care of apparel items.

A scenario‐based experiment was conducted using a convenience sample of 275 undergraduate students for data collection. MANCOVA was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The findings of this research suggest not only that the text only format and the combination of text and symbols format are preferred to the symbols only format but also that the text only format was the most preferred among the three formats. Both the text only format and the combination format significantly increased consumers' confidence in and reduced consumers' risk perceptions about their care of apparel items.

The symbols only label does reduce apparel manufacturers' costs. However, because consumers may use care label information as a decision criterion for purchasing apparel items, industry practitioners need to also pay attention to the impact of end consumers' perceptions of these labels on their purchase decisions.

Examination of three different information presentation formats (symbols only, text only, and the combination of symbols and text) adds to the extant literature focusing on mainly two levels of formats (i.e. visual vs verbal).