Introduction In the contemporary business environment, fashion companies ought to cope with fundamental changes marketing communication has conventionally been performed. In response to shifting socio-demographic, environmental and market-related conditions, gradually new forms of fashion promotion have evolved (Fill, 2006). Nowadays, the global fashion industry experiences a reduced dependence on mass media advertising and an enlarged reliance on dialogic, relationship-oriented and digitally grounded communication methods (Chitty, Barker, Valos & Shimp, 2012). Against this backdrop, it is irrefutable that social media technologies have been remarkably transforming the ways in which modern-day fashion communication is practiced (Brennan & Schafer, 2010; Funk et al., 2016; Dillon, 2012; Saarinen, Tinnilä & Tseng, 2006). The competitive and widely saturated apparel market is facing an era of intensive proliferation of brands, an epoche of awe bombardment of advertisements, which makes a well-though-out communicational strategy ever more imperative, particularly in a cross-cultural context (Dillon, 2012). Yet, studies that analyze the importance of social media in relation to traditional means of fashion communication are scarce. Even though, empirical introductions start being made to this explicit issue, considerable research deficiency subsists in the realm of cross-cultural fashion communication and social media optimization. Therefore, the rationale of this paper at hand is to contribute to balance out this research gap by providing evidence from four countries.

Consumers around the world are increasingly categorized by parallel needs and similar longings which lead to an ever-more homogeneous global market (Chan, Li, Diehl & Terlutter, 2007; van Ittersum & Wong, 2010). The acceleration of global consumer assemblies has concurred with the occurrence and upsurge of global citizens and consumer cultures (Gao, Mittal & Zhang, 2015). Yet, many researchers still claim that cultural differences have to be considered to grasp buying customs of global (fashion) consumers (Tahmid, 2012). The rationale of this paper is to balance out this research gap and to contribute to the current debate of global vs. local (Cleveland, Papadopoulos & Laroche, 2011; Askegaard, Arnould & Kjelgaard, 2005; Arnett, 2002) fashion consumer lifestyle segments with joint or divergent dominant apparel purchase motivations. Motivational factors influencing apparel purchase behavior can be separated into rational, emotional (perceptional) and patronage motives (Diamond, 2005). In the main, Sproles & Kendall´s consumer characteristics approach (1986) provided the conceptual foundation of the present study of fashion consumption motivations (fashion referred to as apparel & clothing), partially modified to suit the peculiarities that mold fashion consumption. The total of 23 motivations is made up of 15 multi-item scales and 8 single items that complement the fashion-specific range of motivational drivers. Especially referring to fashion purchase motivations, countries like Germany and Austria (despite their prosperous market economies) have so far been markedly neglected and even for France, although universally recognized as the leading country for fashion, in-depth research on motivational parameters shaping individual shopping activities is scarce. Likewise, investigations on American (a nation with intense spending capacity) fashion purchase motivations are extremely seldom. The objective of this paper is threefold and expressed through the following three research questions: (1) What are important lifestyle cluster characterized by central fashion motivations? (2) Can representatives for each cluster be found in all countries? (3) Are there country specific differences which point to either global or local fashion consumer segments? The predefined set of fashion consumption motivations was put to test via an online quantitative consumer survey. The questionnaire was delineated in three languages, using a translation-back translation procedure and was thoroughly pre-tested. Altogether, 693 non-student individuals (482 females, 211 males; from 18 to 87 years of age) participated in the survey, equally distributed across countries, ages and gender among the four nations (despite the fact that quota sampling was used). Subjects were asked to evaluate the total of 23 fashion consumption motivations on a 7-point Likert scale. A factor analysis was conducted for each of the established multi-item scales (with a CA value of mostly above .70). Measurement Invariance (Steenkamp & Baumgartner 1998) across the four countries was assessed. Subsequently, a cluster analysis was carried out using the Ward algorithm, incorporating all 23 fashion consumption motivations to acquire a more detailed description of the consumer segments. Five consumer clusters were extracted through Elbow criteria: (1) pragmatic, socially-conscious, brand loyals (n= 195), (2) sustainable fashion shoppers (n=127), (3) detached fashion disinterested (n=128), (4) passionate, luxury-status fashion-leaders (n= 107), and (5) experiential fashion adventure-seekers (n=136). Country-wise, significant differences are manifested between the consumer segments, X²(12, 693) = 69.12, p=.000. Findings portend that consumers in all research countries can be allocated to one of the five clusters. This condition leads to the clear presumption that global consumer fashion consumer segments do exist. Nonetheless, some national divergences become evident. Particularly if a fashion brand or company intends to address a target group affiliating to the consumer cluster 1: pragmatic, socially-conscious, brand loyals, cluster 2: sustainable fashion shoppers or cluster 3: experiential fashion adventure-seekers, national differences need to be taken into consideration. Markedly, a pragmatic positioning appears to be most auspicious to target American and also French consumers whereas a sustainability and ethnocentric orientation seems to be substantially promising to reach German and also Austrian consumers, demonstrating that a complete standardization of a fashion firm´s positioning through the transnational appeal of dominant consumption motivations seems not yet to be advisable. Further implications, limitations and directions for future research are available upon request and will be addressed more thoroughly at the conference.

Background & Research Objectives The ever-changing nature of fashion and multicultural consumption motives shape and challenge the contemporary global fashion world. To some extent, it has been experienced that individuals across countries engage in similar fashion movements simultaneously. Therefore, it may be assumed that there partially exists a homogenized, transnational global consumer segment when it comes to the purchase of clothing items. Nevertheless, on the other hand, there still remain several divergences in the consumption behavior of fashion products around diverse parts of the world (Yurchisin & Johnson, 2010). It is universally agreed that consumers engage in shopping with specific decision-making modes and styles which make the search for a common instrument that is able to describe the purchase orientation of fashion consumers across cultures quite problematic and challenging. Indeed, according to the buyer´s cultural backgrounds, fashion consumption motives and the benefits searched for when buying an apparel product could be very different (Tahmid, 2012).Today´s fashion consumer is characterized by a continuously evolving set of complex wants and needs that can be satisfied by a wide variety of competing alternatives (Pandey & Dixit, 2011). The different aspirations and motivations which consumers express are generally shaped by various shopping outcomes which they are prone to achieve (Yurchisin & Johnson, 2010).Motivation is described as an internal state that activates goal-oriented behaviour. It refers to the processes that lead people to behave as they do. It occurs when a need is aroused that the consumer wishes to satisfy. The need creates a state of tension that drives the consumer to attempt to reduce or eliminate it. This need may be utilitarian (i.e., a desire to achieve some functional or practical benefit) or it may be hedonic (i.e., an experiential need, involving emotional responses or fantasies). Marketers try to create products and services to provide the desired benefits and help the consumer to diminish this tension (Solomon, 2013).It is advocated that fashion consumption is made up of two major categories of drivers, namely social consumption motives and individual consumption motives which both represent psychological determinants. Those psychological factors influencing apparel purchase behavior can be separated into rational, emotional (perceptional) and patronage motives (Diamond, 2005). Rational motives replicate a pragmatic orientation, such as quality- or price consciousness in purchase behavior. In contrast, emotional drivers include, amongst others, motivations linked to physical vanity and fashion consciousness, adventure-, gratification- and pleasure seeking, materialism, status and conspicuousness, impulsive and compulsive consumption. Patronage motives, on the other hand, reflect habitual buying and for instance are connected to brand-consciousness and store loyalty (Diamond, 2005). By profiling international apparel consumers based on their individual decision-making styles and modes, more meaningful ways to identify and understand different cross-cultural customer segments are offered. As a result, fashion industries are able to target each customer segment with more focused marketing-strategies, based on their motives and aimed-for benefits linked to purchasing clothing products.This topic raises a number of important questions for researchers and practitioners. To the authors´ knowledge no empirical contributions to compare and contrast prevalent motives of apparel consumption in Western nations exist. Hence, in order to fill this research gap and broaden this important research area, this explorative study focuses on the identification and discussion of similarities and differences in buying characteristics between the USA, France, Germany and Austria by analyzing valuable motives that have not yet been empirically examined in a cross-cultural fashion context. Methodology Starting with a review of existing literature regarding generic consumer decision making motives, like e.g. Sproles & Kendall (1986), Mokhlis (2009) and Hiu, Siu, Wang & Chang (2001), an initial classification into rational, emotional and patronage motiveswas undertaken for the field of fashion, which later on was expanded using the results of a qualitative pre-study conducted with 50 interviewees in New York to gain first insights as a basis for the proximate, main empirical research. In compliance with triangulation theory in social science (see e.g. Cohen & Manion, 2000), which advocates data collection from manifold sources, a combination of quantitative and qualitative research was carried out in the core study, consisting of expert interviews and an online consumer survey. Due to a lack of existing literature foundation, the main research is explorative and not based on specific hypotheses. In the first section, a qualitative analysis of the mentioned motives was done using NVivo on the grounds of 16 expert interviews with fashion marketing communication and design experts in the four research countries. The second part of the empirical study was conducted via a quantitative consumer survey, to enable a Web based questioning through Lime Survey. To minimize possible language barriers, the questionnaire was delineated in three languages, translated from English into French and German by bilingual professionals in order to ensure best possible quality, precision, accuracy, reliability and validity of the empirical study. For this specific type of quantitative research, a stratified random sampling procedure was applied. Altogether, 693 individuals (482 female and 211 male subjects) participated in the online survey, 174 in USA, Germany and Austria respectively, and 171 in France. The total non-student sample included participants with a mean age of 28.4 years. Subjects were asked to evaluate 22 rational, emotional and patronage motives derived from literature and the pretest on a 7 point Likert scale. Cross-cultural similarities and differences were revealed throughout the examination process. An analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) on the mean values and a subsequent Post-Hoc Tukey Test disclosed significant variations between the four nations for 15 out of the 22 tested motivational determinants influencing fashion consumption behavior. In a first step, the authors refrained from using a factor analysis, in order to retain more detailed information. Findings demonstrate that American consumers pay the most attention towards price-value relations and cheap deals, compared to the remaining countries. They additionally consider quality attributes the least when deciding upon which fashion products to buy. In contrast to the other nations, American consumers are most pragmatically oriented when deciding upon which apparel items to purchase. Furthermore, they engage the least in spontaneous clothes shopping in the spur of the moment. An investigation of the preferred brand segments per country supported these outputs by highlighting the statistic that American consumers buy significantly less apparel from the upper-middle price segment than Austrian, German or French consumers. Accordingly, in comparison to the other nations, American consumers purchase the most value/discount fashion. Moreover, outcomes illustrate that French consumers have a higher tendency of buying garments from the same stores and boutiques than Austrian and German consumers. Correspondingly, Austrian and German consumers feel significantly less confused by over-choice of apparel offerings than French consumers. To that effect, in terms of country of origin being a characteristic that impacts fashion consumption, findings prove that French consumers value national heritage of clothing more than Austrian and German consumers. Indeed, they tend to also pay more attention to buying apparel that originates from the home country. Outcomes further pinpoint that compared to Austrian and German consumers, Americans and French utilize fashion significantly more to make a positive impression on others, feel socially belonging and accepted as well as to be part of a reference group. In contrast to Austrians and Germans, Americans are more likely to adjust their wardrobe to the specific expectations and norms of their working environments. In addition, results indicate that French consumers devote more consideration towards dressing in accordance to their job conventions than Austrian and German consumers. Interestingly, Austrian and German consumers value physical vanity significantly more than American and French consumers. French consumers, however, employ fashion the most as a means of boosting satisfaction with one´s self-image, compared to the other research nations. Detailed results of the empirical study will be thoroughly discussed in the presentation in order to explicitly highlight specific common and divergent archetypes and patterns between the research countries. Additionally, final key outcomes, in-depth implications as well as limitations and directions for future research will be addressed in the conference.