The purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of the utilitarian, hedonic and symbolic benefits of consuming sportswear on consumers’ purchase intention and willingness to pay. Also, the potential moderating role of the type of brands (i.e., luxury vs. regular brands) is examined. A multiple regression was performed to examine the impacts of the perceived utilitarian-, hedonic-, and symbolic benefits on individuals’ purchase intention, while controlling for descriptive norm, financial constraints, prior brand attitude and familiarity, prestige sensitivity, fashion consciousness, and demographics. It appeared that respondents who indicated that the advertised sportswear fulfilled their hedonic, utilitarian, and symbolic benefit had greater purchase intention. A log-linear regression analysis was performed to examine the impacts of the perceived utilitarian-, hedonic-, and symbolic benefits on individuals’ willingness to pay for sportswear, while controlling for the descriptive norm, financial constraints, prior brand attitude and familiarity, prestige sensitivity, fashion consciousness, and demographics. As respondents’ willingness to pay was logarithmically transformed in order to correct its skewed bias from the normal distribution, the findings indicated that those who indicated that the utilitarian and symbolic benefits were fulfilled were likely to pay 35% and 19.4%, respectively, more for the sportswear. In order to explore the potential moderating role of the type of brands, we examined the influences of utilitarian, hedonic, and symbolic benefits on purchase intention and willingness to pay for two split samples—one for the two luxury sportswear brands, and the other for the regular sportswear brands. After estimating coefficients for luxury and regular sportswear brands, respectively, a series of z-tests was performed to examine whether the magnitude of coefficients varied across the luxury vs. regular brands. The impacts of hedonic and symbolic benefits on purchase intention were greater for the luxury brands than for the regular brands, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the utilitarian benefits. Similar patterns of relationships were observed for consumers’ willingness to pay, although the hedonic benefits did not have any significant impact. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed along with future research directions.

• Choong Hoon Lim(Seoul National University)
• Kihan Kim(Seoul National University)
• Yunjae Cheong(Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)