Many fashion brands have established brand pages or accounts in social media platforms as a vehicle to promoting brand and managing customer relationship. Customers’ interaction in social media with other customers and brand page maintainers could attract their attention of the brand and inform their purchase decision. Despite the significance of the interaction in social media, there has limited attention on the social media using experience specified in fashion brand area. Drawing on theories and concepts from diverse areas including social media marketing, consumer psychology, and fashion brand management, this study propose four dimensional of social media using experience to understand how the experience with fashion brand page could enhance customers’ fashion consciousness and status consumption behavior. Data collected from customers who following main fashion brand pages in Instagram and used to test the hypotheses. Implications for research on social media marketing of fashion brand are discussed.

There is a general consensus in the literature that impulse buying is normatively wrong, but accounts for a substantial volume of the goods sold every year across the broad range of product categories, including fashion products. Research revealed that young consumers particularly contributed greatly to the increase of impulse buying. While lack of self-control has been found strongly associated with the unplanned nature of impulse buying, with an environment of abundance and consumerism, self-indulgence, rather than lack of self-control, may become a more important driver for impulse buying for modern consumers (Sharma, Sivakumaran, & Marshall, 2011). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how self-indulgence influences young consumers’ impulse buying and the post purchase consumer regret. This study also aims to test the role of fashion consciousness in the relationship between young consumers’ self-indulgence and impulse buying for fashion products. Self-indulgence is considered a hedonistic tendency, which includes enjoying spending money on oneself, buying things for one’s own pleasure, and trying to enjoy life (Sharma, Sivakumaran, & Marshall, 2011). It was recognized as one of the two opposing cognitive forces leading to impulse behavior (Miao, 2011). While the impulse to purchase is comprised of anticipated pleasures and immediate gratification (Rook, 1987), ironically, consumer regret is one of the major emotional consequences associated with impulse buying. There are two types of consumer regret: cognitive dissonance, resulted from an immediate post-purchase comparison of what was purchased versus the other available alternatives, and consumer guilt, related specifically to the consumption decision situations. Literature suggested that individuals show interest in fashion products with the belief that fashion products will contribute to their appearance, image, and/or bring enjoyment to their life (Workman & Kidd, 2000). In that same token, an individual with high self-indulgence tendency is more likely to show interest in fashion in hopes of identifying fashion items for indulgence purpose. Moreover, this indulgence motivated fashion consciousness will more likely lead to high impulse buying for fashion products. Based on the literature, hypotheses were developed for this study as represented in the following figure. Data was collected using a survey of college students majored in textile/fashion management at a large southeast university in the USA. A total of 190 surveys were distributed and returned. The majority of the subjects were females (73.7%), white (74.7%), and held part-time work (56.7%). Existing scales were adopted to measure self-indulgence (Sharma, Sivakumaran, & Marshall, 2011) and fashion consciousness (Bruner & Hensel, 1998). Impulse buying behavior and post-purchase regret were measured by asking subjects to retroactively recall their shopping trips for fashion products during the past three months. A group of items developed by the researchers were used to measure both the impulse buying behavior and consumer regret. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was first employed to assess the psychometric properties of the constructs. Overall, the fit indices of the measurement model were acceptable (NFI=0.86, IFI=0.935, RMSEA=0.066, CMIN/DF=1.7). A Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was conducted to test the relationship proposed in the hypotheses. To test the mediating effect of fashion consciousness on the relationship between self-indulgence and impulse buying behaviors, a bootstrapping bias-corrected confidence interval procedure was conducted. Overall, the fit indices of the SEM model were acceptable (CMN/df=1.338, NFI=0.90, IFI=0.97, RMSEA=0.044). The SEM results suggested that self-indulgence had a significant influence on impulse buying for fashion products directly and indirectly via fashion consciousness. The impulse purchase behavior had a positive influence on the consumers’ feeling of guilt for the impulse purchase behavior, while no significant influence was found on cognitive dissonance. This research makes several contributions to the literature of impulse buying. First, the study suggests that consumers’ self-indulgence exerts significant direct and indirect influences on consumers’ impulse buying for fashion products. This result may provide an explanation to the phenomenon of increasing impulse buying behavior in the marketplace, even though it is widely considered as a “misbehavior”. Secondly, this study suggests a significant mediating role of fashion consciousness in the relationship between self-indulgence on consumers’ impulse buying for fashion products. The abundance of fashion products in the market and the appreciation of the social and affective function of fashion products contribute to the chain effect from self-indulgence to fashion consciousness and finally to impulse purchase for fashion products. Third, this study confirms the negative guilt feeling resulted from the impulse buying behavior.

The global luxury market is relentlessly growing over the last few decades, defying the global economic crisis. It is estimated that the luxury market is made up by a continuously enlarging heterogeneous group of 330 to 380 million consumers worldwide. The consumption of luxuries goes beyond the riches and wealth of countries, as the highest luxury spenders are to be found in places like the Middle East, Japan, and China. Luxury goods’ penetration relatively to GDP is low in countries like Germany and the U.S. and high in Italy, France, and South Korea. Wealth and economics alone cannot explain the economics underlying luxury consumption; culture is an important driver of growth in this sector. Culture gives meaning to luxuries, affects the perceived value and motivations to buy luxury goods, and determines luxuries’ signaling power and potency as differentiators and identity signifiers. Today, despite the size, growth and geographical spread of the luxury goods market, cross-cultural research is limited and rather scattered in different fields. Much of the research undertaken draws from Hofstede’s typology of culture and focuses on a narrow range of conceptual issues. The purpose of this presentation is to review and summarize existing cross-cultural research on luxury products and to identify fruitful future research directions that will expand our understanding of luxury goods marketing. In addition, attention will be given to examining current trends and behaviors in the field

The purpose of this study is to identify the antecedents of fashion consciousness. As antecedents, psychological variables and consumption-related variables were considered. Materialism and change seeking were included as psychological variables, and face conscious consumption, status consumption, and shopping enjoyment were included as consumption-related variables. It was hypothesized that materialism and change seeking not only influence fashion consciousness directly but also indirectly through face conscious consumption, status consumption, and shopping enjoyment. Data were gathered by surveying university students in Seoul, using convenience sampling. Three hundred five questionnaires were used in the statistical analysis. SPSS was used for exploratory factor analysis, and AMOS was used for confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis. The results showed that all the fit statistics for the variable measures were quite acceptable. In addition, the overall fits of the model suggest that the model fits the data well. The hypothesized relationship test proved that materialism directly influence fashion consciousness and that materialism and change seeking influence fashion consciousness indirectly through face conscious consumption and shopping enjoyment. Regarding their relative importance on fashion consciousness, shopping enjoyment was the most influential factor followed by materialism and face conscious consumption, in that order. In developing and implementing marketing strategies for fashion conscious consumers, marketers should focus on satisfying shopping enjoyment, materialism and face conscious consumption.

The purpose of this study is to identify the antecedents and consequence of role-relaxed consumption. Consumption-related variables were considered as antecedents, and fashion-related variable was considered as a consequence. Hedonic consumption, impulse buying, value consciousness, and brand sensitivity were included as consumption-related variables and fashion consciousness was included as a fashion-related variable. It was hypothesized that hedonic consumption, impulse buying, value consciousness, and brand sensitivity influence rolerelaxed consumption and then influence fashion consciousness. Data were gathered by surveying university students in Seoul, using convenience sampling. Two hundred twenty seven questionnaires were used in the statistical analysis, exploratory factor analysis using SPSS and confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis using AMOS. While hedonic consumption, impulse buying, value consciousness, and brand sensitivity were uni-dimensions, role-relaxed consumption and fashion consciousness were multi-dimensions. Factor analysis of role-relaxed consumption revealed two dimensions, 'self-centered decision making' factor and 'importance of intrinsic value' factor. In addition, factor analysis of fashion conscious revealed three dimensions, 'individualism' factor, 'dressing style' factor, and 'appearance' factor. Tests of the hypothesized path show that impulse buying and brand sensitivity negatively influence 'self-centered decision making' and that hedonic consumption and value consciousness negatively influence 'importance of intrinsic value'. While 'self-centered decision making'negatively influence 'dressing style' and 'appearance, 'importance of intrinsic value' negatively influences all factors of fashion consciousness. The implications of these findings and suggestions for future study are also discussed.

This study examines how environmental consciousness and socially responsible clothing consumption attitude influence people's perceptions of the consequences of fast fashion. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey administered to females in their 20s to 40s, and a total of 430 surveys were used in the final analysis. The research results are as follows. First, environmental consciousness-which was conceptualized as interest in consumer effectiveness and the environment-had a positive influence on attitudes toward socially responsible clothing consumption attitude, i.e., clothing recycling and resource conservation. As the perception of consumer effectiveness was high, respondents had a tendency not to follow trends. Second, consumers with a high level of interest in the environment perceived the effect of fast fashion on the environment as serious, and they felt negatively toward personal use of fast fashion. Third, consumers with strong resource conservation behavior perceived the effect of fast fashion on the environment as serious, but those with positive attitudes toward secondhand clothing did not appear to have that perception. Finally, consumers who followed trends and those with weakly held attitudes about resource conservation felt positively toward personal use of fast fashion. The results of this research indicate that environmental consciousness is an important factor for socially responsible clothing consumption behavior. In addition, consumers with strong attitudes regarding resource conservation were more perceptive of the negative effect of fast fashion on the environment.

Nowadays, personal media is a new tool for communication as digital cameras and mobile phones are developing rapidly. We are concerned over Cyworld users who could have different personal characteristics which will influence on buying patterns in on line shopping behaviors. The purpose of this research was to observe fashion attitudes and purchase behavior of Cyworld mini homepage users, for establishing marketing strategies by understanding consumers. For this study, one line survey was used for 500 male and female subjects who are 20 to 40 years old. Only reliable 441 questionnaires were used for analysis. The SPSS program was used for frequency, K-means cluster, t test, and chi-square test. A total of 441 respondents were clustered on the basis of 8 item self-disclosure scale, using the K-means procedures. The results indicated that respondents were clustered into two segments; 267 respondents(active attitude towards self-disclosure) and 164 ones(not active). We examined fashion attitudes in mini home page and buying behavior by self-disclosed variable. Those who are involved actively in self expression and self-disclosure considered more fashion style and trend. The major motivates of web surfing was finding a good design, and good price. High self-disclosure group tends to search many shopping mall for right design and low self disclosure group tends to search them for the right price. High self-disclosure group tend to shop the fashion products more, while low self disclosure group tend to purchase books more through the internet. We realized that active group in self-disclosure purchased their clothing accidently when they visit Cyworld.