Purpose Built on the socioemotional selectivity theory, the purpose of this paper is to analyze elderly female consumers’ consumption of environmentally sustainable apparel (ESA) according to their time perspective (TP) (expansive vs limited) and different types of advertising appeals (emotional vs rational and positive vs negative emotional appeals). Design/methodology/approach The study conducted a survey and experiments with 154 US female consumers who were 65 years of age or older. Data were analyzed through regression and ANCOVA. Findings The results showed that older female adults with an expansive TP tended to consume ESA, with their fashion consciousness moderating the results. Rational and either positive or negative emotional advertisements with environmental messages were found to encourage the higher purchase intentions of elderly consumers more effectively than advertisements with no environmental messages. Practical implications Apparel retailers are recommended to consider the factor of TP when encouraging environmental consumption. Environmental messages containing rational information and eliciting positive and negative emotions are suggested to promote purchase intention toward ESA among elderly consumers. Originality/value This study addressed an under-studied segment in ESA consumption – elderly female consumers – built on the socioemotional selective theory, and confirmed that this group’s ESA consumption can be explained by their perspective on time. In addition, this study confirmed which advertising appeals would effectively encourage their ESA consumption, and provided theoretical explanations for these findings.
In the fashion and retail industry, a group of startups, referred to as Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands, are proliferating. DTC brands are defined as e-commerce brands that sell directly to consumers, without retailer ‘middlemen’ like department stores. They typically begin as a purely online business, fully leveraging digital channels for marketing and selling. Given the limited research on the topic, this paper aims to identify determinants of consumers’ attitudes and re-purchase intentions toward DTC brands. The initial qualitative phase of in-depth interviews with frequent DTC shoppers, resulted in the identification of eight determinants. The subsequent quantitative analysis with 210 US DTC shoppers confirmed that co-creation, cost-effectiveness, website attractiveness, brand uniqueness, social media engagement, and innovativeness of DTC brands significantly influence consumers’ attitudes while cost-effectiveness (indirectly), brand uniqueness, social media engagement, and brand innovativeness affect consumers re-purchase intentions. The findings offer insights for aspiring entrepreneurs and incumbent retailers on strengthening their value propositions.
Based on the stimuli-organism-response model, this study aims to examine whether consumers’ store experience through virtual reality (VR), compared to website experience, can attract them enough to perceive the online store as appealing. Two types of stimuli were developed for the experiments: consumers’ VR store experience (106 data) (i.e., having respondents experience 360-degree-based VR store videos recorded at a fashion retailer) and store website experience (107 data) (i.e., having respondents experience the same store’s website). The results revealed that relative to an ordinary store website, consumers’ VR store experience evoked positive emotions and increased perceived store attractiveness. This study also discovered that store familiarity does not moderate the relationship between the two store experience types and evoked emotions, implying that VR technology is effective regardless of consumers’ familiarity with a store. Text analytics were also utilized, providing additional insights about their VR store experiences. This study suggests an effective method for online retailers to emulate an attractive store environment and entice consumers through VR, regardless of the retailers’ fame. Specifically, it demonstrates the effectiveness of VR over website in enhancing store attractiveness, an under-studied area.
Transparency is one of the most prominent demands of consumers today. Numerous fashion brands are responding to this demand for transparency by sharing information on the cost-breakdown of products and manufacturing processes. Research shows that transparency can become a vital tool for product, process, and business model innovation. Nonetheless, little is known about the role of transparency and how it affects consumers’ perceptions of a brand in a fashion context. By applying the signaling theory, the purpose of this study is to investigate how consumers react to fashion brands that provide price or production transparency. The study further examines whether the extent of information disclosure and perceived fairness of the information also play a role. An experiment of nine scenarios using a fictitious fashion brand was developed, and data were collected from 349 American consumers through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk). The findings suggest that both price transparency and production transparency positively affect the overall brand equity and consumers’ purchase intentions as long as the information is perceived to be fair regardless of the extent. This study extends our current understanding of the role of transparency as an extrinsic signal and also suggests that brand transparency may be another key dimension of brand equity.
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