In this study, the case of brand IMC communication of LG Hausys’ total interior solution brand Z:IN was dealt with. The target consumer of the Z:IN brand is a general end consumer and also shows the character of industrial goods. Accordingly, there should be a unique aspect that brand management and communication methods must be made from more angles. For many companies which are active in the industry, this case study should be significant. This case study was researched in terms of consumer’s purchase decision-making process and consumer participation and experience. Brand Zi:in developed a brand communication strategy following the flow of the consumer purchasing decision process. And the brand actively induces consumer experience and participation so that consumers can communicate more closely with the brand. Brand communication from the perspective of consumer purchasing decision-making and consumer experience and participation is a crystal that fully considers LG Hausys’ products, markets, and competitors, and will be an effective strategy to continue to preoccupy the market not only in the present but in the future.
Introduction
Drawing from Kahneman and Tversky’s, (1979) prospect theory, this conceptual paper attempts to go beyond our knowledge of how consumers understand, perceive, use, and apply nutritional information on nutritional labels especially at the point of purchase (Cowburn & Stockley, 2005; Grunert & Wills, 2007; Miller & Cassady, 2015) to examine whether a health-conscious consumer’s food product choice decision will largely be based on negative or positive nutrients on the nutritional label. This has become necessary because of the criticality of consumers’ decisions regarding nutrition issues to marketers and policymakers (Chen, 2013; Clare & Burghardt, 2015; Ellison et al., 2013) which has resulted in a growing interest in nutritional information issues among researchers. A review of the extant relevant literature also shows that, studies examining how consumers place value on the positive nutrients (those that enhance and improve their health – e.g. Vitamins) and negative nutrients (those that have deteriorating effect on their health – e.g. Fats) and how they affect their purchasing decision are scarce.
Conclusion
This paper argues that, it is not enough to know how consumers understand, perceive, use and apply the nutritional information especially at the point of purchase etc. shown in the literature. There is the need to go further to examine the influence the nutrient content claim (both positive and negative nutrients) have on consumer nutritional choice decision when purchasing a food product. There is also a need to go beyond the dieting and ill consumers who because of their conditions seek specific nutrients in their foods and consider the larger consumer segment who are health-conscious by taking Burton and Andrews (1996) and Baltas’ (2001) research a step further. The study provides evidence for the use of prospect theory in nutritional label issues and go a long way to reinforce its application in this regard. The study enables marketers to: gain understanding of what nutrient content claim will cause a consumer to decide to purchase a food product when seen on a nutritional label; shape the format of the nutritional information on nutritional labels for easy use by consumers; and know what to emphasize in communicating nutritional information to their consumers.
Shopping at bricks-and-mortar stores is considered highly experiential. An ability to experience and physically interact with a product is a key benefit of shopping at offline stores. In an online shopping context where sensory experience is absent, researchers have looked at how mental imagery as an alternative to in-store sensory experience impact consumer decision-making (Yoo & Kim, 2014). However the role of mental imagery has been largely overlooked in the context of offline store shopping. While it is true that shopping at offline stores facilitates sensory experience, evidence from cognitive neuropsychology literature supports that visual perception impacts visual mental imagery (Bartolomeo, 2002). Therefore, it is reasonable to posit that sensory experience in stores is related to mental imagery. Yet the relationship between actual sensory experience and mental imagery in the context of store shopping has not been studied. To fill a gap in the current literature, this study aims to examine the process by which sensory experience and mental imagery facilitate purchase decision-making in the context of offline stores. Based on the model of recursive relationships among consumers’ emotional, cognitive, perceptual and behavioral responses (Scherer, 2003) and a review of previous literature, this study posits that actual sensory experience and mental imagery related. It is further posited that both actual sensory experience and mental imagery influence consumers’ affective (anticipatory emotion) and cognitive responses (e.g., decision satisfaction, perceived ownership and decision satisfaction). This study employed an online survey in Korea. Apparel shoppers who shopped and purchased apparel at brick-and-mortar stores during the last six months were recruited. To facilitate a retrieval of in-store experiences, a series of questions about their specific shopping trip and purchases were asked at the beginning of survey. The current study consists of measurements adopted from the existing literature with adequate reliabilities. All the items were measured using a 7-point Likert-type scale. A total of 455 respondents completed the online survey questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were examined to assess reliabilities of the measures, and reliability coefficients were acceptable for all constructs (.78 ~ .92). Results of the SEM revealed that all the model-fit indexes exceeded their respective common acceptance levels, suggesting that the proposed model fitted the data well (2 = 627.38, df = 175; NFI = .92; IFI = .94; CFI = .94; RMSEA = .075). All the direct relationships among variables were significant except for the effect of sensory experience on perceived ownership, the effect of mental imagery on decision confidence, and the effect of perceived ownership on behavioral intention. This study provides new insights into consumer in-store shopping experiences and theoretical and practical implications. Sensory experience and mental imagery are complementary in facilitating consumer in-store shopping experiences. In addition to the importance of sensory experience, this study provides empirical evidence to support the vital role of mental imagery in the context of in-store shopping. Visualizing a situation through vivid mental imagery combined with actual sensory experience will lead consumers to positive shopping outcomes. Further research is warranted to better understand how to optimize actual sensory experience and mental imagery to offer excellent in-store experiences.
The concept of „Sustainability‟ has become as major concern and it used by consumers and corporations to convey the concept of taking care of the environment. Environmental concern has led to sustainable consumption in a variety of product categories, such as electricity, textiles, apparel, food, and grocery products (Chan, 2001; Harrison, Newholm, & Shaw, 2005; Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006a, 2006b). Interest of the negative environmental impacts are rapidly increasing in present fashion business and consumer behavior has become a rising concern of the consumption and fashion supply chain to apply sustainable consumption (Birtwistle & Moore, 2007; Fineman, 2001). The environmental and social concern recognized in fashion industry from 1990‟s. However, the complexity of conceptual definition of sustainability and ecologically responsible consumer generates different and mistaken perception to consumer. In addition, in fashion industry, the terms of „eco-fashion‟, „environmentally friendly fashion‟,„green fashion‟, „ethical fashion‟, and „sustainable fashion‟ are frequently used interchangeably to describe the same concept. These interchangeable terminology is leading to confusion of the readers by the non-unified terminology (Choi et al., 2012). Also, consumers seem to have narrow scope and little understanding of sustainable fashion. In general, consumers focuses on environmental aspect not the wide-range of complexity of environment, social, and economical concern (Cervellon, Hjerth, Ricard, & Carey, 2010). The growing number of fashion brands are leveraging on green branding initiatives. Green marketing is increasing rapidly in corporate aspects and for a consumer perspective, global consumers are recognizing a personal accountability to take responsibility for social and environmental issues. Despite the fact many of individuals‟ willingness to purchase green products has increased in the last few years, however, there is limited studies suggest that purchase of green or sustainable products. Consumer research on sustainable fashion has mainly focused on consumer behaviors towards sustainable fashion products (SFPs); however, relevant studies that examined the whole process of the predicting proenvironmental behavior cross nationally value and the eWOM are still scarce. The purposes of research model are 1) to identify the determinants of eWOM intention on consumers' purchase intentions, 2) to examine the information adoption process as precursors of purchase intention of sustainable fashion, and 3) to testify different message types effects to information adoption process.
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.
This study investigates Australian consumers’ decision-making styles for everyday products. The CSI is based on preliminary work done by Sproles (1983), in which he argued that there are certain fundamental styles that all consumers apply to their shopping and buying. These styles included brand, price, or quality consciousness and provided a conceptual framework for describing consumer decision making styles. Consumers’ decision-making styles influence how they negotiate their way through the decision-making process, i.e., how they approach information search, evaluation and selection, and purchase behaviour (Durvasula et al., 1996). The characteristics of decision-making styles can be effective in profiling an individual’s consumer style in terms of their product evaluation and selection process (Canabal, 2002). The CSI, however, has some limitations. First, previous studies using the CSI have mostly focused on non-specific product types (Durvasula et al., 1996; Leo et al., 2005). Secondly, most of the research using the CSI has focused on student samples (Fan & Xiao, 1998; Hafstrom et al., 1992; Shim, 1996; Sproles, 1983) that have limited income and marketplace experience, and are still learning their consumer styles. In the light of above limitations, this research is developed focusing on specific products (e.g., confectionary) and distributing the CSI within heterogeneous sample. Based on a sample of 229 respondents, an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis was adopted to validate Sproles and Kendall’s (1986) Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI). Results found that six decision-making styles: ‘perfectionist, high quality’, ‘confused by overchoice’, ‘impulsive’, ‘habitual/brand loyal’, ‘novelty/fashion’, and ‘recreation conscious’ were retained from the original Sproles and Kendall’s (1986) CSI and one decision-making style such as ‘rational, price conscious’ was developed for Australian consumers. Results also found that 24 items were removed from the original CSI for better fit and ‘brand conscious’ decision-making style showed less than satisfactory reliability indicated that the original CSI inventory needed modification when being applied to Australian consumers. The findings of this study has extended the literature by determining the applicability and the generalizability of the CSI in context of everyday products which is yet to be known in relation to Australian consumers.
The world has changed dramatically, and the concern with regard to environmental and social impacts of economic activity have become hot issues that have been extensively discussed. Many marketers are applying sustainability as the part of their CSR and consumers are becoming more involved in ethical value of sustainable issues. However, yet, most people still perceive sustainable products as “alternatives” due to various reasons like price, design or simply unfamiliarity with the brand (Niinimaki, 2010). In a current situation where more and more brands are coming to the market offering the variety of choice of sustainable product, brand popularity can be a signal, or cue that help consumers to decide those of unfamiliar sustainable brand because brand popularity can influence the evaluation and decision in the sense that consumers perceive popular brand not only as trustworthy, but also superior to others (Dean, 1999).In terms of brand popularity, “popular” brands tend to acquire more favorable evaluations and larger user shares with, rather than without the popularity component. However, with such characteristics, brand popularity concept can be used within a cue utilization theory, which suggests that products consist of an array of cues (extrinsic and intrinsic) that serves as indicators of quality for consumers when they make decisions related to the product (Olsen, 1972), delivering brand popularity by extrinsic cue through advertising. In addition, the signaling theory suggests that when brand is ranked as popular, consumers assume there are trust and confidence behind the brand, which reduce their level of uncertainty (Dean, 1999). As such, while it has been argued that this cue could be useful as it provides a certain value to consumers and influence their opinion about the brand and, consequently, purchase decision, up to now, there are little studies that use the brand popularity concept as extrinsic cue.Along with the issue of brand popularity, although different consumers around the world make their decisions based on their own mental or physiological orientation, and the difference among consumer behavior has been widely studied and reported, yet, most of sustainable marketing campaigns are made in the similar fashion, without adapting them to specific traits of consumers in different countries. However, in order for sustainable The world has changed dramatically, and the concern with regard to environmental and social impacts of economic activity have become hot issues that have been extensively discussed. Many marketers are applying sustainability as the part of their CSR and consumers are becoming more involved in ethical value of sustainable issues. However, yet, most people still perceive sustainable products as “alternatives” due to various reasons like price, design or simply unfamiliarity with the brand (Niinimaki, 2010). In a current situation where more and more brands are coming to the market offering the variety of choice of sustainable product, brand popularity can be a signal, or cue that help consumers to decide those of unfamiliar sustainable brand because brand popularity can influence the evaluation and decision in the sense that consumers perceive popular brand not only as trustworthy, but also superior to others (Dean, 1999). In terms of brand popularity, “popular” brands tend to acquire more favorable evaluations and larger user shares with, rather than without the popularity component. However, with such characteristics, brand popularity concept can be used within a cue utilization theory, which suggests that products consist of an array of cues (extrinsic and intrinsic) that serves as indicators of quality for consumers when they make decisions related to the product (Olsen, 1972), delivering brand popularity by extrinsic cue through advertising. In addition, the signaling theory suggests that when brand is ranked as popular, consumers assume there are trust and confidence behind the brand, which reduce their level of uncertainty (Dean, 1999). As such, while it has been argued that this cue could be useful as it provides a certain value to consumers and influence their opinion about the brand and, consequently, purchase decision, up to now, there are little studies that use the brand popularity concept as extrinsic cue. Along with the issue of brand popularity, although different consumers around the world make their decisions based on their own mental or physiological orientation, and the difference among consumer behavior has been widely studied and reported, yet, most of sustainable marketing campaigns are made in the similar fashion, without adapting them to specific traits of consumers in different countries. However, in order for sustainable brand to become main stream it is important to understand how the traits of consumers from other countries differ. Thus, it is important to understand the cultural difference in terms of marketing.Therefore, this study adapts brand popularity concept as an extrinsic cue that serves as a certain indicator for consumers (Dean, 1999) and consumer decision making styles as mental characteristics for shopping orientation (Sproles & Kendall, 1986) in order to see cross-cultural difference in consumers’ perception of sustainability brand among 3 countries: Korea, China and Russia. Choice of countries is not only resulting from the difference in behavior and attitudes towards sustainable consumption of Greendex (National Geographic & Globescan, 2013), but also, the difference among countries even when belonging as a part of Asia. Thus this study investigates overall consumers’ decision making style among three countries of South Korea, China, and Russia to find the effect of brand popularity on brand evaluation. Additionally, the moderating effect of fashion leadership and sustainability involvement was preceded. From this, it aims to provide implication for positioning and marketing sustainable brand in accordance to the difference consumer segmentation. A study was designed to determine which dimensions of consumer style inventory of country are most frequently associated in accordance to countries and whether brand popularity had affect on purchase intention of sustainable brand. The hypotheses were tested with a data set developed form field survey. The study was conducted cross-nationally in Korea, China, and Russia using online and offline survey. The survey questionnaire reflected a quasi-experimental design. The between-subjects design employed consisted of two between-subject factors of brand popularity and consumer decision-making style. The factor brand popularity had two levels: one provided with a brand popularity ranking as an extrinsic cue and one without. The resultant questionnaire was pretest by natives before distributing. No discrepancies among the surveys were reported. The consumer decision making style had three levels of Korea, China, and Russia. The questionnaire was pretest by 30 fashion marketing researchers before distributing. Of the 376 samples collected, 6 were returned incomplete. An additional 18 samples were deleted for further analysis as the answers were unusable. In total 352 samples – 113, 121 and 118 samples from Korea, China and Russia respectively – were subjected for final analysis.A one-way MANOVA revealed a significant multivariate main effect for consumer decision making style of the nation (Pillai’s trace = .23, F (10, 676) = 9, p <. 000). Given the significance of the overall test, the univariate main effects were examined. Significant univariate main effects for consumer decision making style of nation were obtained for quality (F = 6.95, p <.01), for uniqueness (F =7.54 , p <.01), for favorability (F =6.94 , p <.01), and for purchase intension (F =4.33 , p <.05). Significant nation pairwise differences were obtained in popularity among Korea, China, and Russia. In case of Korea, the effect of brand popularity yielded significantly higher mean score when it was presented. However, for China, the effect of brand popularity was significant as well (Pillai’s trace = .10, F (5, 114) = 2.45, p <. 05). Meanwhile, the outcome of Russia had different aspect to the prior two countries with no significant difference at all. The t-test provides evidence to support the claim that the effect of brand popularity differs according to the consumer decision making style of nations. Participants were placed into "high" or "low" fashion leader groups on the basis of previously obtained attitude. The group was divided according to the mean value (X = 2.98). Significant nation pairwise differences were obtained in fashion leadership among Korea, China, and Russia. In case of Korea, the effect of fashion leadership was not shown significant. However for China, the effect of fashion leadership was significant (Pillai’s trace = .31, F (5, 114) = 10.27, p <. 001). Russia also had dramatic effect of fashion leadership (Pillai’s trace = .12, F (5, 110) = 3.03). Significant nation pairwise differences were obtained in sustainability involvement among Korea, China, and Russia. The significant dependent variables appear differed by nations. In case of Korea, the effect of sustainability involvement was significant (Pillai’s trace = .17, F (5, 105) = 4.33, p <. 01). Similarly, the effect of sustainability involvement in China was significant (Pillai’s trace = .20, F (5, 114) = 5.82, p <. 001). The result of Russian was not significant. This study examines the overall effect of brand popularity and consumer decision making styles among three countries: South Korea, China, and Russia on customer evaluation of sustainable brand with the moderate role of fashion leadership and sustainability involvement. This study found that the effect of brand popularity differs according to the consumer decision making style of nations, fashion leadership, and sustainability involvement. Thus, consumer culture should be considered when applying such communication strategy. The result revealed that first hypothesis that brand popularity will affect consumer evaluation on the sustainable brand was denied. This can be explained due to the experimental condition of this study where it applied a virtual brand and the virtual institutions for evaluation. However, in more specific, this can be described as due to the cross national method of this study. The previous studies only focus on proceeding study in one country (Kim & Chung,1997; Rao & Monroe, 1988). It was found that Koreans tend to be more recreational, impulsive, confused by overchoice, brand conscious, and habitual whereas China brand conscious, impulsive, and less confused by overchoice. Russia was scored significantly low on all above mentioned criteria. The moderating effect of consumer decision making style of nation was investigated. The result indicated significant difference of consumer decision making style of nation. Whereas Korean had positive effect of brand popularity on brand evaluation when presented, China showed negative influence, and Russia had no significant impact. This can be due to the Korean consumers’ tendency to value trust and reputation. Individual Korean consumers tend to buy products of large we The third hypothesis of fashion leadership negatively affecting the effect of brand popularity was also partially supported. The significant dependent variables appear differed by nations. In case of Korea, the effect of fashion leadership did not shown significant, yet China and Russia did. However, while China had positive effect of brand popularity, especially to those with high fashion leadership, Russia had negative effect of brand popularity. The difference on consumer decision making style in between high and low fashion leadership groups was investigated. For Korea, involved subjects were significantly more novelty conscious, hedonic shopper, habitual. In case of China, involved subjects were significantly more perfectionism, brand conscious, novelty conscious, impulsive, confused by overchoice, and habitual Lastly, for Russia, involved subjects were significantly less brand conscious novelty conscious, hedonic, impulsive, and habitual. The result of Korea can be inferred as the high trend sensitivity of Koreans. With less difference in consumer decision making style in between high fashion leaders and low fashion leaders, compared to the other two countries, the effect may have not been clearly shown. The result of China and Russia can be interpreted as that the Chinese fashion leaders being more brand conscious caused higher result when the brand popularity was provided. Yet, in Russian fashion leaders who are less brand conscious and less impulsive may have affected the rigid attitude towards the well-known sustainable brand. Lastly, the effect of sustainability involvement was examined. In case of Korea, the effect of sustainability involvement was significant. Similarly, the effect of sustainability involvement in China was significant. The result of Russian was not significant. "high" and "low" fashion leadership groups differed in their decision making style by nation. For Korea, involved subjects were significantly more novelty conscious, hedonic shopper, and more habitual. In case of China, involved subjects were significantly more perfectionist, brand conscious, novelty conscious, hedonic, impulsive, confused by overchoice, and habitual. Lastly, for Russia, involved subjects were significantly more perfectionist. The difference of the result can be explained through the distinctive culture of each country along with the result of the consumer decision making style of the highly involved groups from each country. Koreans, as mentioned above, the effect popularity cue works stronger than other countries. The tendency of preferring products with powerful brand name would have affected the result as expected. However in case of China, along with that Chinese having suspicious perception on institutional documents, significantly being brand apathy may also explain the result. In addition, Russia overall had a high score of sustainability, which can relate to the fact that although slight decrease in its Greendex recently, it has been ranked for several years now, the sustainability value itself may have worked as a intrinsic value of the brand rather than brand popularity cue.ll-known companies rather than small and unfamiliar ones (Kim & Zhang, 2009). The result of China can be explained with Chinese consumers’ characteristics of having suspicious perception on transparency of the enterprise information (Brandvista, 2013). Especially distrust on official data or the governmental exists. With Russians result, this finding are supported by several previous research that suggests that new brands coming to Russian market at the very high speed and disappears quickly due to complexity of the market, thus consumers don’t have time to strongly attach to one brand (Peskova, 2007).
The purpose of this study was to identify the determinants of decision-making confidence of clothing. As determinants, this study examined consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence, vanity, and clothing knowledge. Data were collected through surveying university students in Seoul metropolitan area using convenience sampling method. Out of 324 distributed, 300 useful questionnaires were returned. The results showed that identical conformity among consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence factors significantly influences, both directly and indirectly, decision making confidence through vanity. Although normative conformity does not influence decision-making confidence directly, it does significantly influence decision-making confidence indirectly through influencing vanity and clothing knowledge. The results suggest clothing is a manifestation tool for managing public self, which finally leads to increased clothing knowledge and decision-making confidence of clothing. These findings may be used by marketers in developing strategies for product development and promotion.