This study illuminates the inherent difficulty to manage creativity in fashion design as well as the innovation capabilities in an entire fashion firm. The paper is elaborating creative capabilities in fashion extended to the entire supply chain. In addition to manufacturers and retailers the supply chain also includes transporters, warehouses, stores, and even customers themselves. Within each stage includes all parts needed to get and satisfy customer requirements. This research is based on data from two of the most rapid growing and profit increasing fashion brands in Sweden, which are Cheap Monday and Acne Studios. The analysis has three starting points and definitions. i.e. fashion design, creativity and innovation. The results show that creative capabilities have to been spread out in the entire supply chain to be an efficient component in the building and managing an innovative firm such as it is the case in the fashion industry.

This study proposes the use of fashion as a tool of psychotherapy for individuals feeling social and psychological pressure due to society’s emphasis on appearances. The concept of fashion therapy was re-established, and theories (cognitive behavioral therapy, person-centered therapy, solution-focused brief therapy) founded on art therapy were introduced. Based on past research, this study developed a process for fashion therapy.

Anna Dello Russo has worked with H&M, the Sartorialist's Scott Schuman has written his second book and home-grown Susie Bubble has consulted for Gap, Armani and Selfridges to name a few. There is no doubt that these figures are key influencers in the world of fashion and they are turning their efforts and knowledge into fiscal benefits. Fashion blogs have become not only a form of user-generated content, a medium for communicating to the masses without any prior training or knowledge, but have also evolved to become a new marketing communications channel in their own right. Fashion writers are not only dictating content to esteemed fashion titles that were once only contributed to by the fashion journalist elite, but they are engaged as brand consultants with the aim of shaping the future direction of brands in terms of content, style and scope. When did all this power and influence happen and how can we measure it? This is the central question inherent to this study’s focus. The dynamic nature of digital, online and social media activities means that most research is out of date or getting closer to ‘expiry’ even as the ink dries on the page. To exemplify: research dated just three years ago still includes MySpace in a comprehensive list of online networks and social media sites (e.g. Mir and Zaheer, 2012) and ‘second life’ as an innovation [albeit this has been experiencing somewhat of a renaissance within certain consumer sectors in recent times]. This aside, the point is thus: academic scholarship cannot keep up with the rapid rate of digital change in the landscape, but it continues to try, as does this humble study. A volume of research has recently contributed to the understanding of the influence of social media in the fashion sphere, predominately from an electronic word-of-mouth (e-wom) perspective, for example (Bronner and Hoog, 2013; Fang, 2014; Hennig-Thurau, 2004; Kulmala et al., 2013; Liu, 2006; Trusov et al., 2009) engagement with social media (e.g. Campbell et al, 2012; Dhaoui, 2014). This body of literature has supplied a solid foundation for understanding why user-generated content may be shared and under what circumstances and to whom. However, a limitation of these significant contributions are reasons for propensity to influence, that is, once it has been shared, distributed and circulated, how do we measure the impact of this influence? Yes we can use analytics to quickly demonstrate quantitative and numerical impact in terms of followers, traffic, interaction, sales and (not so quickly) the wider reach of blogs on PR for brands, brand-metrics and customer engagement. But what about the wider influential impact of key social media writers and opinion leaders, or those that follow and listen to them: how can we evaluate this impact of influence? How does it work? Why does it work with some over others? We seek to find answers around this notion of social influence and ask: why do people listen to bloggers? Do consumers of this information distinguish between platforms: do they prefer blogs? Twitter? Picture-content through Instagram or Pinterest? Is there a gender difference? Considering also the rise in ‘erasable’ social media in the form of SnapChat, which lasts ten seconds before ‘self destructing’: what impact are these having in terms of influence in particular sectors like fashion, how can brands harness this power and use it to build equity, target new consumers, increase sales and revenue? In other geographical domains, such as China, where social media constraints and censorship are notable, emerging applications like WeChat are increasing in popularity, first with consumers, but retail and fashion brands are also beginning to endorse them to facilitate a meaningful conversation with their customers through these innovations. We also aim to explore the current state of play regarding terminology for social media contributors – are they still bloggers even though they create content across-platform? (It would be unusual for example, for a popular and credible blogger to only have a blog and no twitter or Instagram activity). Is the term blogger naturally all-encompassing or is it a misnomer that we need to create new terminology to explain these phenomena? Cullen (2014) the fashion magazine editor of Elle Australia created a blogger award ceremony to honour the contribution of these fashion influencers and comments that: “We picked the ones that we felt have the most traction with our readers. It is very clear we are in a blogger boom right now and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and [the nominees] gave fashion this new relevance. They took fashion and democratized it, so rather than have to see what the designer wanted you to see [on the catwalk], they took the runway fashion and put it together in their own ways. They made it wearable, as they mixed it with other labels and all those things that make an outfit work for real life.” This quote serves to illuminate an example of the commercial impact of fashion bloggers in the fashion sector and the relevance that influential opinion leaders believe they can have on their readership. Thus, we seek, through our research, to interrogate existing literature on social media, marketing, consumption and consumer psychological theories in the context of fashion influence with the aim of contributing to understanding in this fast-evolving transformative sector. Social media has been defined as: ‘A group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content. (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010, .61). Within this context, social media applications exist to facilitate user interaction, and include blogs, content communities, discussion boards and chat rooms, product and/or service review sites, virtual worlds, and social networking sites (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010; Mangold and Faulds, 2009). In this paper we focus on social networking, which refers to applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, Instagram/Pinterest and more disposable aps like Snapchat. Essentially, we take an all-embracing approach to understanding social media, as this is simply how it is used by consumers, in the virtual landscape (for example, users do not distinguish between platforms, they simply use the most appropriate means to communicate their content at that time). We aim to contribute a perspective that is original by investigating existing literature in two territories: social media influence and Social Impact Theory, which we will use as a theoretical perspective to explore the influence of social media on fashion. A Theoretical Lens: Social Influence Theory (SIT) After dismissing other theoretical frameworks for our study’s focus including: Uses and Gratifications theory; Involvement and Motivation, the choice to focus on Social Impact Theory (SIT) (Latane, 1981) was rationalized by the centrality of influence as a construct, to the characteristics of the theory. SIT (Latane, 1981) maintains, “as the number of people increases the impact on the target individual’s attitude and behavior enhances”. As influence is inherent to our aim, this theory, albeit being created almost two decades before the concept of social media, may have transferable qualities that may aid comprehension of understanding into the complexities associated with understanding the influence of social media in the fashion sector. This seemingly large leap from a traditional application of the theory to the virtual world is made more plausible by at least one previous study, that has started to also recognize the value of this framework for understanding online activity for example, Mir and Zaheer (2012) who use SIT in the contexts of social media and banking. The theory has not however, been used thus far in the realm of fashion and social media, thus, a study of this kind aims to contribute to knowledge in this field. Social impact has been defined by the founding father of the theory as: ‘Any of the great variety of changes in physiological states and subjective feelings, motives and emotions, cognitions and beliefs, values and behavior, that occur in an individual, human, or animal, as a result of the real, implied or imagined presence or actions of other individuals’. (Latané, 1981, p. 343) Latané (1981) created social impact theory to validate his hypothesis about how influence works, which led to the identification of three factors that make up social impact theory: 1) Strength: How important is the influencing group to the target of the influence; 2) Immediacy: How close in proximity and in time is the influencing group to the target of the influence; 3) Number: How many people are in the influencing group. Taking each one of these in turn, the leverage of these variables to a social media context seems obvious. Social media by its very nature encourages a ‘pull’ approach to groups or communities (hence the ‘strength’ variable); the ‘immediacy’ of social media in the sense that messages can be communicated and responded to in real time, have been facilitated by social media capabilities. Finally, the third variable of SIT is ‘number’; in a virtual world, there is a real sense that there is no limit to the amount of people you can communicate with. To exemplify, we refer to Facebook with its 9 Billion plus users as an example of this reach, or Lady GaGa with her 44 Million plus followers on Twitter. This succinct insight into SIT theory provides a short rationale as to its applicability to a social media context, specifically the fashion sector. A more in-depth analysis of its use and application to this study will be developed for the final paper following data collection.

A survey of 570 adolescents reveal that attitudes toward luxury fashion brands rely on a balance between desires for assimilation (i.e., susceptibility to peers’ influence) and individuation (i.e., need for uniqueness); innovativeness mediates these relationships and culture plays a moderated mediation effect.

With the sweeping popularity of Korean Wave across Asia, the number of Chinese tourists to Korea has rapidly been increasing over the last decade. Korea Tourism Organization estimates that the number of Chinese visitors exceeded 6 million in 2014, and Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade estimates that their spending in Korea surpassed KRW 7.67 trillion in 2013 alone. In particular, Chinese tourists spend most of their money in Korea on shopping. Since Chinese have become the major customers of the Korean market, it is critical to understand their consumption patterns and behavior. Previous studies looked into tourist destinations and shops that Chinese people frequently visited, and also researched on product selection criteria regarding their preference on fashion products. However, this study focuses on how Chinese tourists feel while they are shopping in Korea and how such emotions affect their evaluation on the purchased products. Planned purchase refers to the situation where the buying intention of a consumer has already been formed prior to entering the store based on the perception of purchase necessity. An unplanned purchase is not anticipated or planned before the customer enters the store, and products are bought without planning similar to impulsive buying. Oliver (1980) suggested that emotions are an important factor when consumers evaluate a product. Therefore, this study focuses mainly on the emotion created during the shopping. We conceptualized product attitudes based on the expected consumer satisfaction paradigms of Oliver and Desarbo (1988). This study also explores the product usage satisfaction of tourists as a post-purchase attitude. According to statistics, majority of Chinese tourists who buy fashion products are women. The survey is conducted on 550 women in the age group between 20 and 60 years who have visited Seoul before, using an online panel of respondents sampled by an international survey firm. 530 questionnaires are analyzed, with the remaining responses determined to be incomplete. For the demographic characteristics of the sample group, the average age is 33.5 years old, with 201 in their 20s (37.9%), 190 in their 30s (35.8%), 107 in their 40s (20.2%), and 32 in or over their 50s (6.0%). As for the average household income, RMB 10,000 to 20,000 is the most frequent (210 or 39.6%). For residential areas, Hua Dong (East China) is the most frequent (207 or 39.1%). Data are analyzed using structural equation modeling by AMOS 20.0. Respondents were asked to recall most impressive fashion product that they bought in Korea during their visit, and to answer whether it was planned or unplanned purchase.This study also attempts to measure the emotions they had during the purchase in order to understand differences in attitude toward the purchased products. Although emotions cannot persist over time, previous studies have measured emotions during consumption to evaluate the situation. The study categorizes respondents according to their purchasing power into heavy and light buyers to determine the moderating effects of purchase amount. In the literature, purchasing power is described in terms of the number of purchase and purchase amount. Based on previous studies on purchasing power, consumers can be categorized as heavy or light buyers. This study focuses on purchase amount in the context of tourism shopping. The results find that planned purchases tend to deliver positive emotions, which in turn enhances product satisfaction. Unplanned purchases, positive shopping emotions have positive impact on their attitude toward purchased products. Interestingly, unplanned purchases have negative direct impact on the product attitude without the mediating role of positive shopping emotions, showing the importance of positive emotions that consumers feel while shopping When it comes to the impact of purchasing power, the effect of unplanned purchases of light buyers on shopping emotions or product attitude was not significant. Only planned purchases trigger positive emotions, many of which induced positive impact on product satisfaction. For heavy buyers, on the other hand, even unplanned purchases have positive impact on their product satisfaction when positive shopping emotions are developed. This study is differentiated from previous studies in that it deals with how purchase types (planned vs. unplanned) affect shopping emotions and post-purchase product attitude of Chinese tourists who account for the significant share of the Korean tour industry. It is also notable that this study groups tourists by their purchasing power and identifies the impact of their purchasing power, considering the fact that tourists are increasingly influencing the domestic consumption market. The Korean government and companies may tap into the results of this study to provide better environments to trigger positive shopping emotions to tourists. However, it should be considered that the subject of this study is limited to Chinese female tourists, which should be complemented by future studies.

Network analysis of keywords relevant to three fashion trading areas, Garosu-gil, Dongdaemun, and Itaewon in Seoul, Korea, revealed that ‘associated industry’ is an important factor along with ‘design’ and ‘brand’. Additionally, distinct attributes of each commercial district can serve as differentials to attract consumers; thus, they are necessary factors in order to develop as fashion trading areas.

Advancements in communication, manufacturing, economic environments and consumer preferences have created new opportunities for small firm internationalisation on a global scale. Within the creative industries, fashion design entrepreneurs operate within the small and medium enterprise sector on an international level developing extraordinarily influential connections with fabric and materials suppliers, manufacturers, sales and PR agent, trade fairs and retailers throughout the globe (Centre for Fashion Enterprise 2008). Entrepreneurial design firms are increasingly identified as key sectors for economic growth regardless of their need for promotion and support to achieve sustainability, amplifying the focus on generating emerging talent within the fashion industry (British Fashion Council 2012; Centre for Fashion Enterprise 2008). Highlighted within the media through the development of support programs such as the Council of Fashion Designers of America Vogue Fashion Fund and the British Fashion Council’s Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, among others, independent fashion apparel design firms often operate within the luxury, contemporary and bridge designer product categories, producing conceptual pieces for editorial placement as well as commercially desirable and wearable garments. In the earliest stages of development these companies experience considerable marketing expenses and higher manufacturing costs out of proportion to initial turnover, requiring the designer to seek out support initiatives, high street licensing partnerships and freelance design collaboration opportunities that are usually outgrown within a few seasons, illustrating the need for these firms to quickly establish self-sufficient viability as a brand within the marketplace (Centre for Fashion Enterprise 2008). While these companies can be described as ‘born global’ (Knight & Cavusgil 2004), few studies have attempted to illustrate the strategies by which fashion design firms achieve international success in spite of their limited resources. Within marketing literature, brand development is increasingly identified as imperative for the long-term economic sustainability of the firm. While previously thought only to operate within the realm of marketing, the creation of brand values are now understood to be built through communication activities only to a limited degree. Indeed, communication efforts act only as a supportive activity; understanding of brand development now encompasses its significance to overall firm culture, structure and essence through the action and interaction of product development, management and communications strategies that permeate the entirety of the firm internally and radiate externally (de Chernatony 2001). Recent literature recognises the brand’s co-creation within the marketplace and the influence of consumers of brand identity (Salzer-Mörling & Strannegård 2004; Power & Hauge 2008). Despite this, entrepreneurial fashion designers may not even 'brand' their firms according to established methods delineated via the marketing industry. This research examines the practice of entrepreneurial womenswear design firms based in London and New York to identify and understand the branding and internationalisation strategies adopted and created by these firms. Using an exploratory and qualitative approach to the research phenomenon, this investigation uses grounded theory as the methodological framework to examine the contemporary context in which design firms operate within the currently existing globally competitive marketplace. Using theoretical sampling to direct data gathering, this research incorporates the use of semi-structured in-depth interviews with womenswear designer fashion enterprises and their support network of PR agents, showroom managers, sales agents and photographers to examine the strategic growth and development of SME design brands. Additionally observation at New York, London & Paris fashion weeks and discourse analysis of websites, social media and press is used for the triangulation and verification of emerging concepts within the data. This paper presents the collective emerging strategies that London and New York based womenswear SME fashion design firms employ to develop product, integrate into the fashion industry and connect with consumers globally. Within the context of grounded theory's constant comparative analysis, this paper will present the evolution of understanding gained during the research investigation. This analysis is the collection and comparison of codes and categories that creates the foundational conceptual framework for the emerging theoretical model of how entrepreneurial fashion designers define and create their brand identity throughout processes of development, growth and internationalisation. The purpose of this paper is to present and examine the strategies of London and New York’s independent entrepreneurial womenswear design firms revealed through the concepts, categories and insights examined during data gathering and analysis. The research aims is to provide insight regarding the current brand and management methods implemented by entrepreneurial designers, enhancing and informing marketing and design literature. Researching international fashion branding of emerging designers creates understanding of these entrepreneurs who operate as born global fashion firms. By exploring how fashion designers define success for their company, create and translate their brand essence into messaging, and utilise communication activities in growth efforts, this research creates understanding of these entrepreneurs who operate within the gap between new talent and economically sustainable and established businesses.

In a period of crisis and uncertainty as the current, heritage marketing is a suitable strategic opportunity because it associates values and meanings to products and services by using corporate heritage or brand heritage in order to communicate identity, continuity and stability. Heritage marketing seems particularly appropriate for high symbolic fashion brand that require the ability to transmit identity and to generate symbolic meanings. In relation to high symbolic fashion brand, an opportunity for heritage marketing strategies is to narrate the myths associated with the brand. In fact, literature has highlighted that fashion brand can be associate to the concept of myth thanks to the presence of symbolic values and meanings. Heritage and myth are concepts linked to time and progression. Therefore, they should continually innovate and evolve in relation to the community of reference in order to find a balance between continuity and renewal. However, a risk of heritage marketing strategies is to merely celebrating the past thus losing the ability to generate and regenerate myths and symbolic values. This paper aims to provide a critical contribution to heritage marketing literature highlighting the risk of obsessive fixation in the celebration of the past. In order to avoid this risk, the paper proposes that a possible solution might be the integration of mythopoesis which is the ability to generate and regenerate myths in order to create and perpetuate sense and meaning through narrative.

Nowadays, Korean culture affects fashion cultural industry. Furthermore, art and fashion collaborate considerably more now than in the past. Korean fashion experts and fashion cultural industry have mainly focused on global tourists. Fashion cultural products that promote the image of Korea synthesize both traditional and contemporary traits of the Korean culture (Cho, 2007), which reflects cultural and economic values. Hallyu, which means ‘Korean Wave’, has been a popular trend of Korean cultural contents on the global market. The target market of the contemporary Korean fashion clothing has mostly targeted global tourists. However, traditional products dominate over a few contemporary products on the Korean cultural product market. This study focuses on the contemporary Korean fashion clothing that are designed and reinterpreted in our times. When these designs become available on the market, they can excite more interest both in the fashion industry and among the consumers. This will help highlight the importance and potential of the present-day Korean cultural products. The purpose of the study is to figure out effects of contemporary Korean fashion clothing attributes on consumer response and consumer behavior. Contemporary Korean fashion clothing attributes are divided to Korean culture, fashion/practicality, creativity/uniqueness and design/aesthetic traits. Consumer response is to see the affective and cognitive response. Also, consumer behavior is to see preference and purchase intention. In the study, the data was used to conduct exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis with SPSS, 21.0 and Amos 18.0 was used to conduct confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling for testing the hypotheses. The results revealed fashion/practicality, creativity/unique attributes had positive effect on affective response and creativity/unique, design/aesthetic attributes had positive effect on the cognitive response. In addition, affective and cognitive response had positive effect on preference but only affective response had positive effect on purchase intention. Lastly, preference had positive effect on the purchase intention. The implications of this study would stimulate the expansion and further development of the Korean contemporary design market. However, as a limitation of research, limited category of product was used so more various kinds of fashion category can be used for the future research.

In a period of crisis and uncertainty as the current, heritage marketing is a suitable strategic opportunity because it associates values and meanings to products and services by using corporate heritage or brand heritage in order to communicate identity, continuity and stability. Heritage marketing seems particularly appropriate for high symbolic fashion brand that require the ability to transmit identity and to generate symbolic meanings. In relation to high symbolic fashion brand, an opportunity for heritage marketing strategies is to narrate the myths associated with the brand. In fact, literature has highlighted that fashion brand can be associate to the concept of myth thanks to the presence of symbolic values and meanings. Heritage and myth are concepts linked to time and progression. Therefore, they should continually innovate and evolve in relation to the community of reference in order to find a balance between continuity and renewal. However, a risk of heritage marketing strategies is to merely celebrating the past thus losing the ability to generate and regenerate myths and symbolic values. This paper aims to provide a critical contribution to heritage marketing literature highlighting the risk of obsessive fixation in the celebration of the past. In order to avoid this risk, the paper proposes that a possible solution might be the integration of mythopoesis which is the ability to generate and regenerate myths in order to create and perpetuate sense and meaning through narrative.

This study was designed to investigate luxury brand co-value creation. A mixed method approach was used to 1) identify encounter attributes of value co-creation, consumer value and brand value and 2) examine the relationships among encounter attributes, consumer value, brand value, and purchase intention to explain the process of value co-creation.

In the last decade loyalty programs have gained popularity across various industries. They are one of the most popular marketing tools that companies use to increase retention, enhance loyalty and gather ‘big data’. The number of companies adopting loyalty programs is rapidly increasing with fashion department stores grown their loyalty program subscriptions by 70% between 2010 and 2012 (Colloquy, 2013). One of the main reasons for this growth can be attributed to the benefits fashion retailers offer to their customers. A new body of current research had directed its attention to a comprehensive set of benefits offered by loyalty programs as well as their potential to increase customer retention and profitability (Evanschitzky et al., 2012). Until recently, it was debatable if loyalty programs can be effective and appropriate in luxury retailing (Lowenstein, 2009), despite research evidence showing a positive effect of loyalty programs’ benefits on customer retention (e.g. Mimouni-Chaabane & Volle, 2010). Traditionally, luxury companies and retailers build loyalty through top-end and differentiated customer experiences. If loyalty schemes were to succeed in the luxury sector they had to deliver the kind of recognition and rewards that make luxury shoppers feel remarkable. Given the growing interest in loyalty programs and scarcity of research related to their effectiveness in the luxury fashion department stores, this study comes to examine the effectiveness of such programs. In particular, this research examines how the utilitarian, hedonic and symbolic perceived benefits from loyalty programs can influence the satisfaction and trust with the program and consequently store loyalty. These relationships are compared between high- and low-end fashion department stores and the differences in their effectiveness are reported. To test these relationships data were collected form a sample of 984 consumers from an online panel in US, using a structured questionnaire. A range of different department stores that offer loyalty programs were pre-selected through a rater procedure to represent the high- and low- fashion department stores. Using structural equation modelling and multi-group analysis, findings support that the effectiveness of loyalty programs is important to both high-and low-end fashion retailing settings but the strength of this effectiveness varies across the two settings. Specifically, hedonic and symbolic benefits derived from loyalty programs found to be more important in the high-end rather than the low-end fashion retailers. In contrast, utilitarian benefits found to be much more effective in influencing customers’ satisfaction with the program in the low-end fashion retailing. The results of this research address an important research gap and help to better understand customers' perceptions of loyalty program benefits obtained from high- and low-end fashion department stores. Finally, the findings provide clear guidelines for managers in both high- and low-end fashion retailing on how to design effectively their loyalty program rewards, by strategically allocating their resources to the benefits that are more important in their setting.

Over the last five years the notion of ‘third space’ or ‘place’ has started to become referred to within a retail context (Nobbs & Manlow 2014). Third space is defined by Mikunda (2004: 11) as “somewhere which is not work or home but a comfortable space to browse, relax and meet people, even enjoy a meal”. In the fashion sector there is an increasing trend for retail and culture/leisure activities to be housed in the same space as means of drawing customers into the store and tempting them to stay for longer. However there is a lack of both empirical and conceptual research on this emergent concept (Oldenberg1999). The aim of this study is to investigate the notion of third space in practice from both a brand and consumer perspective with respect to identifying the motives and methods for its adoption. Experiences form an integral part of third space as they activate psychological experience mechanisms (Mikunda 2006). This study will consider the motivations for stakeholders to invest in third space environments using the chosen case study fashion brand Urban Outfitters. This retailer has a history of creating unconventional store formats which blend music, lifestyle and fashion products under one roof. In 2008 they created a development called Space fifteen twenty in Los Angeles which was a curated mix of ownbrand and lifestyle brands and featured food, art, vintage and programme of events aimed at the hipster community. In 2014 they opened a store called Space 98 in Williamsburg in Brooklyn which used the same formula, a carefully selected space with an art gallery, revolving pop up stores and a bar and restaurant (WGSN 2014). The research methodology utilises a qualitative approach in the form of store observations, in-depth interviews with store and head office staff, the architect and also snapshot exit interviews with patrons of the store. The results are audio recorded and analysed using thematic content analysis. The outcome of this exploratory technique will provide a 360 degree perspective of the concept in action. The results of the study will be useful for academics and retail marketing practitioners interested in the impact of store formats on consumer behaviour and brand identity.

Consumers struggle to find clothes that are fit. This is a problem that has been accentuated with the increasing online sales. It is the largest contribute to sales returns and make customer return about every third item they buy (Ratcliff, 2014). If consumers select to buy online, they can no longer try them out in a fitting room. Most of fast fashion brands have opened their online shops, and many designers’ brands have also started to sell their ready-to-wear lines online. While online shopping is seen as a significant new way to reach more consumers in fashion industry, the size problem becomes more visible and is waiting to be solved. It may decrease the fashion industry’s ambition to piggyback on recent advances in e-commerce. Previous studies on clothing consumption have already touched upon the topic of size and fitting. Consumer surveys in the clothing industry indicate that in general between 35% and 50% of female consumers in the USA were not satisfied with the fitting in their clothing already ahead of the surge in online stores (Desmarteau 2000; Goldsberry et al. 1996). Alexander et al. studied the shopping behaviour of young women in south-eastern USA and found that almost 64% of the respondents frequently changed ready-to-wear clothes to achieve the desired fit (Alexander et al. 2005). Ashdown and Loker pointed out the size problem in current clothing shopping experiences and proposed a conceptual framework called “mass-customized target market sizing”, which is a size system “based on and derived from measurement data exclusively from the people who represent an apparel firm’s target market” (Ashdown and Loker 2010, p147). In this paper we study how innovative mobile technology, social media and crowd sourcing can contribute to solving the size problem. We summarize the current digital approaches that deal with the fitting issues in online clothing shopping and present a new concept, called “Figuracy”, which attempts to find consumers new fitted clothing items through matching their own clothes with anonymous persons’ virtual wardrobe. We have built a mobile application to implement the idea and have done two initial feedback studies to see the consumers’ attitudes. This concept provides new perspectives and opportunities of tackling the fitting problem in online shopping. Ready-to-wear and fast fashion brands are selling their clothes all over the world, not just to one local community. This business model of constantly new collections, draws on standardizing size series that come only in a selected number of models. This adds to the continuous size problem where the interpretation of a particular size varies in-between brands, and even within different models from a single manufacturer. Firms in the ready-to-wear apparel industry in the world use different sizing systems, like general sizes as XS, S, M, L, or more specific standards as numbered sizes from UK, US, FR systems, which can make consumers confused. These sizing systems are usually based on the ideal body types of consumers from certain geographic regions (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2009), thus, a size standard from one region may not fit all types of body within this region. What’s worse, there has been vanity sizing in clothing industry in recent several decades, which actually makes the garments of the normal sizes bigger in physical size (Dooley, 2013). This adds to the difficulty of finding well-fitting apparels. Recently, a few companies have provided a number of solutions to the fitting problem. The solutions are based on fine-grained automatic body measurements; self-generated extended body or garment measurement and body matching. First, the approach to use technology for more automatic and detailed measurements has attracted many interests. For example, it has been to generate a visual presentation of the body by using three-dimensional scan technology. Then consumers do not need to type information manually. A UK-based company, called Bodymetrics, provides the services that use three-dimensional body scanner and “On-line Virtual Try-On” technology to help find the perfect pair of jeans. Second, there are a number of services that require users to manually type the measurements of their bodies or garments that they own and fit. It can be done by users input information of their body types by answering simple questions, such as weight, height, body type, or measurements of bust, waist and hip. Some systems like Mipso, SmartFit can add more personal preferences, such as colours, cuts and budgets. Then the system runs some algorithms to determine the users’ full set of body measurements. It can also be done such as Virtusize, Truefit and Clothes Horse by measuring a garment that the user knows it fits in detail (Perez, 2012). When the personal data is added to the service, it can then match individual’s body measurements with specific brands and sizes of garments. The service recommends fitted ready-to-wear clothing from various brands in online stores, like Fashion Metric and Virtusize. The data can be used to see how fitted the clothing item in an online website is on a virtual avatar built upon the input measurements of the users, like in Virtusize and Mipso. Third, it has been suggested to use self-described body descriptions and then match consumers’ new purchases as a way to recommend clothes that are fit. For instance, Fitbay attempts to personalize clothes suggestions based on the selection of other users with similar descriptions of size and body shape (Lomas, 2014). Through the help of anonymous persons in the community, one could find fitted clothing items. We investigate a fourth approach, called “Figuracy”, where people get suggestions on the garments that are fit by crowd sourcing their existing clothing items and then matching wardrobes among members in the community. It draws on utilizing the matching of consumer-generated data, i.e. crowd sourcing as Fitbay also does. But it uses a description of existing fitting garments in people’s wardrobes in terms of brands, models and size, rather than self-description of bodies. The idea depends on that a community of people are willing to share information of their favourite and fitting clothes from their own wardrobes. The system matches the clothes from one wardrobe with that of other members in order to recommend new fitting clothes to the user. In specific, if the system finds that a user shares a single clothing item with another person in the community, it will predict that the two of them have similar body types. Then it recommends other items from the second person’s wardrobe to the first user. Therefore, the system gains data from the fitting clothes in users’ wardrobe and matches the information with the items from someone else’ wardrobe. If the approach is successful, consumers would not need to input any personal body-data but only data on existing fitting clothes. The concept depends on the existence of a massive database of clothing items from individual wardrobes, i.e. a critical mass, which is also a big challenge to build. The Figuracy concept and implementation is at an early state and it has not yet the amount of content to start generating matching suggestions. Still, the concept is intriguing and the size problem is highly relevant. Thus we were interested in acquiring early users’ feedback. We have done two user studies of two variations of the concept, with a focus on one type of clothing item- the bra. Bras have high requirements on fitting (Chena et al. 2010) and it is considered specifically difficult to find garment of this type that is fit. Since the number of test persons was limited to around ten people each, the system did not generate any matching suggestions. The first test was done in November in 2013 on the app that was available in iPhone’s App-store. This version of the system reads the barcodes, which are usually attached to the price tag, to acquire a unique identifier for brand, model and size. We invited the participants to download the app and scan the barcodes of fitting bras when they try new bras in stores. We conducted phone interviews with six participants. The early feedback identified that users hesitated to add garments based on the barcodes. They did not feel comfortable with adding it in a fitting room in a shop, and they did not have any saved prize tags for the bras at home. Thus, although the barcode is theoretically and technically an easy and effective way of uploading garments, it proved to be inadequate in practice. Based on this feedback, we built a new version, which includes a manual and text-based tag function allowing users to add information about a garment, which do not require barcode reading. The second user feedback study was carried out in December in 2014. We recruited female students on the campuses of Stockholm University and Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. In the end, nine participants tested the application and input data of their bras at home. After the try-out, we contacted the participants for either a phone interview or a face-to-face interview, each of which lasted between twenty and forty minutes. Each interview was recorded and transcribed. We used a method of qualitative content analysis to study the transcripts. “Qualitative”, as opposed to quantitative, indicates that the analysis goes beyond systematic data coding to identify interesting topics and allow us to contextualize the interpretation of the materials, given theoretical preconceptions (Mayring 2004). Through studying the transcripts, we find the following preliminary results. First, our participants all provided concrete examples of size problems they met in real life. Seven participants considered bras as one of the clothing items that are most difficult in this respect. Three participants stated that size should not be independent from other qualities, such as comfort and style. This implies that future design of similar systems may take into account not only sizes, but also other aspects of clothing. Second, in terms of the input function, all of them followed the instructions and managed to input information of their fitted bras from their wardrobes. Seven participants considered it easy to use while two of them thought it was a bit confusing when to add information. They got stuck at whether they should scan the barcode or just type, since the two functions were presented in one place. All of them used “type” to add items and thought the information on what they should input was acceptable. Four participants felt it complicated to take photos by themselves, so they downloaded pictures from the Internet. In addition, the participants tended to add the latest and favourite items from their wardrobes into the system. Thus these items could represent their personal tastes and styles, which will be useful to link fitting and styles in the future improvement of the application. This also points to a general problem. From an individual perspective, a single item would in the long run be enough to get matches from other people’s wardrobes, if they have added more than one item. If they also only add only a single item, the first person would not get any matches. The users must crowd source their wardrobe, and not for example their latest purchase. The user study shows that this concept might be restricted by users’ unwillingness to present data in such a way. Third, as to social interaction, eight participants at least “liked” one item from others’ wardrobe. Although none of the participants commented on other’s items, they all thought it was important to have some kind of social interactions. Four participants expected more interactions, such as reviews and discussions of certain clothing items, or following fashionable people. Most of the existing fitting systems, except Fitbay, lack the opportunities for social interaction, but Figuracy provides such a platform for users to share their interests and exchange their ideas. Two participants asked for increased opportunities to add the information on their own profile pages even though they were sharing images of their underwear. They asked for means similar to those available when building a blog space so that people in the community would get to know each other better. According to the participants, more social interactions could make them more engaged with the application. Social communities are good for those looking to learn, help and/or support like-minded individuals with common interests. Last but not the least, most of the participants were very interested in the “buy” function, which link the item to online shopping sites. But still three participants revealed their concerns and discussed the problems of it, such as how the system can guarantee the fitting of the item if they conduct a purchase through the system. In sum, the use of crowd sourcing and social interaction to fixing the size problem in online shopping gained great interests among participants. However, they also expressed their uncertainties towards how the system would work. They needed the system to make sure that it could provide fitting clothing items. They thought the biggest problem was that it was unclear what real help they could get from the application at this stage. Although the application failed to provide new recommendations based on matching, the user study allows us to see the feedback of the potential users so that we could improve the system, such as clearer interaction flows in adding items and more interesting interactions. Future research will continue the improvement of the system, start collaborations with online clothing stores and a third recruitment of users to test. On a general level, the study provides an example on how to investigate critical topics in online fashion through the so-called design research. Such research needs to be interdisciplinary and span technology and social science.

Customization systems have incarnated the notion of co-creation and provided a wide variety of customized products which fit individual customers’ needs. However, most customized fashion items are no more than modified products based upon existing products and, therefore, satisfy only expressed needs. In contrast, mass-production systems can offer more innovative fashion items satisfying latent needs, though they may not fit individual needs in detail. To investigate the relationship between the type of market orientation (responsive vs. proactive market orientation) and the type of production system (mass-production vs. customization systems), we conduct a consumer survey regarding four types of fashion items (sneakers, business shirts, belts, and underwear). The results of ANOVA showed that fashion categories in which customers have the needs for responsive market orientation have much potential for developing customized products, whereas fashion categories in which customers have the needs for responsive market orientation have less potential for providing customized products. The results also showed that fashion categories in which customers have the needs for proactive market orientation have much potential for providing new, innovative (mass-produced) products, whereas fashion categories in which consumers have proactive market orientation have less potential for providing new, innovative (mass-produced) products. Firms should emphasize on the responsive market orientation if their customers perceive much potential for developing a customization system in the category; firms should emphasize on the proactive market orientation if customers perceive much potential for offering new, innovative products under the previous mass-production system. If there are potentials for developing both innovative mass-produced products and customized products, firms need ambidextrous market orientation.

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.

The fashion industry has been dramatically transformed during the last 20 years with the introduction of fast fashion: a style of instant cutting edge fashion at affordable prices (Sheridan, Moore, & Nobbs, 2006). The term, fast fashion, describes a business model characterized by rapid supply chains, merchandising techniques and retail technology all developed to respond to increasingly fast changing consumer demands (Kim, Choo, & Yoon, 2013). In contrast to this business format, luxury fashion brands have always held a superior position in the fashion industry through their quality, limited release and pricing policies. The contemporary fashion industry is now highly competitive, with this additional pressure coming from fast fashion companies constantly delivering original and “fresh” products at affordable prices (Cholachatpinyo, Fletcher, Padgett, & Crocker, 2002). Despite the apparent price discrepancy between fast fashion and luxury fashion products, both these two fashion styles appear to cater to a consumer’s need for uniqueness. Through the consumption of fashion this uniqueness factor becomes evident in the way in which consumers convey their individual identity and self-image to society. Intuitively, as the two styles of fashion are distinctive, the type of uniqueness component desired by their consumer will differ. Therefore, we ask: “what aspects of uniqueness are motivating consumers to choose between fast fashion and luxury fashion brands?” The paper answers this important research question through evaluating (1) the predictively of fashion-brand attitude and self-congruency on fashion style preferences and (2) the moderating role of consumers’ need for uniqueness (CNFU) in these direct relationships. An online survey of 301 U.S. participants was conducted utilizing a quazi-experimental between-subjects design. All participants had experience with purchasing either fast fashion or luxury fashion clothing. Fashion-brand attitude and self-image congruency were treated as independent variable with preference for fashion style as the dependent variable. The three factors that constitute CNFU were treated as moderators. The results suggest that fashion style preference is determined more by the level of self-image congruency than positive attitudes towards fashion brands. More importantly, the different qualities of CNFU are capable of influencing individual consumers’ fashion preference within each fashion style. Collectively, the findings present strong supporting evidence that the differences in consumers’ need for uniqueness are likely to affect some fashion style preferences and not others. In particular, the majority of findings are consistent with the central argument that fashion consumers are uniqueness seekers and have their own ways of portraying their individuality to society (Workman & Caldwell, 2007). There was however inconsistent results obtained by treating CNFU as a single moderating construct, thus adding further support for Tain, Bearden and Hunter’s (2001) proposition that the consumers need for uniqueness consists of three distinct components, each specifying a unique personality trait.

Corporate association—which refers to consumers’ beliefs, knowledge, perceptions, and evaluations of a corporation—can affect consumers’ purchasing intentions. Corporate association consists of corporate ability association and corporate social responsibility association. Corporate ability association refers to a company’s product quality, corporate innovation, productivity, consumer orientation, and after service. Corporate social responsibility association, which refers to the social perspective a company has of its responsibility to society, can affect corporate image and consumers’ purchasing intentions. Eco-labeling for protecting and sustaining the environment is one of the important green marketing strategies in the fashion business that can influence corporate association and consumers’ purchasing intentions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of consumers’ eco-label recognition on their corporate association and intentions to purchase eco-friendly fashion products. Questionnaires were distributed to consumers. The 263 usable questionnaires that were returned were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha, factor analysis, regression analysis, and t-test. The results were as follows: There was a significant effect of eco-label recognition on corporate association (ability association and social responsibility association). Eco-label recognition and corporate association were found to significantly affect consumers’ purchasing intentions. Regarding the eco-friendly fashion product buying experience, there was no significant difference on corporate association and buying intention, but there was significant difference on eco-label recognition.