Unveiling the Soaring Trend of Fashion Rental Services: A U.S. Consumer Perspective

Abstract

Fashion rental services have become increasingly popular due to their provision of sustainable and environmentally friendly ways of consuming fashion products. This research aimed to investigate the effects of various stimuli offered by these services, such as product variety, information quality, style conformity, and service quality, on consumer internal states (perceived performance risk, perceived financial risk, perceived social risk, perceived utilitarian value, and perceived hedonic value) and consequently their external responses (purchase intention and word of mouth). The SOR (stimulus—organism–response) model was applied, with consumer knowledge acting as a moderating variable between the stimuli and organism constructs. To examine and analyze the proposed hypotheses, an online survey was administered, resulting in 379 eligible survey responses. The findings reveal that stimuli offered by fashion rental services (product variety, information quality, style conformity, and service quality) show more significant impact on consumer perceived utilitarian value and hedonic value than perceived performance risk, financial risk, and social risk. Consequently, consumer perceived utilitarian value and hedonic value play a more influential role than perceived risks in forming the positive behavioral responses (use intention and word of mouth). No demographic variables were found to have any significant impact on the purchase intentions or word of mouth regarding fashion rental services. The proposed model shows a high explanatory power, collectively accounting for 60.1% of variance in U.S. consumers’ intention to use fashion rental services and 63.5% of variance in U.S. consumers’ WOM on fashion rental services.