Consumer Self-Monitoring, Materialism and Involvement in Fashion Clothing

Abstract

This study examines the relationships between gender, age, self-monitoring, materialism, fashion clothing consumption motives and fashion clothing involvement. The study initially builds on the work of Browne and Kaldenberg (1997) and Auty and Elliott (1998) in relation to self-monitoring and involvement, however, this research uses different measures of self-monitoring and involvement. A self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data, resulting in 450 responses being obtained to explore the relationships between the constructs related to fashion clothing. Specifically, the model delineates the key determinants of fashion involvement and tests these relationships using Partial Least Squares (PLS). The results support the predicted relationships suggesting that the model provides a reasonable framework to understand fashion involvement. Materialism and symbolic motives were found to have a significant effect on respondents level of involvement in fashion clothing. Age and gender had differing effects on purchase decision and product involvement. However, contrary to the findings of Browne and Kaldenberg (1997) selfmonitoring was not that strongly related to both materialism and fashion clothing involvement, and self-monitoring levels did not differ by age and gender.