Age and gender influences on fashion

Fashion orientation

In our contemporary society, we may not understand fashion, you may not like fashion, but most of us can not not come into contact with fashion. Craik (1994) said that fashion is confusing, interesting, exciting, obsessive-compulsive. Whether we like it or not, it has greatly influenced with people even those who want to avoid it.

What is the fashion?

Fashion have experienced a serious of style popular during a specfic period of time(Nystrom,1928).Craik (1994) can divided into two ways: West High Fashion and Everyday Fashion; High Fashion refers haute coutureor elite designer fashion, Everyday Fashion is people everyday clothing, so everyday Fashion Street Fashion another similar statement. Fashion can be explained as psychology, sociology, and consumer behaviour studies. fashion will be described as a social and psychological response to the external environment (Wester’s,1966).

What is the fashion orientation?

Fashion Orientation defined wearing different style of clothing items make a gorgeous overall look(Evelyn,2005). Fashion orientation can be describes when consumer go shopping, they always look for fashionable items(Ko and Kincade 2007). consumer do not lost interested in fashion even time goes by. fashion orientation represents when it come out with fashion awareness, it can not ignore how important people’s life-style are. Because fashion comes from human daily life, life style includes people living and spending time and money” (Engel, Blackwell, & Miniard, 1990, p. 342). People can be not mentioned about their values in their lifestyles and a life style has great impact on fashion orientation. Moreover, according to Gutman&Mills (1982) study, it described fashion orientation comprised of four dimensions: fashion interest, importance of being well dressed and anti-fashion attitude and fashion leadership. Darley & johnson (1993) mentioned that fashion orientation is fashion innovativeness together with fashion leadership. Both Jonathan and William defined fashion orientation is in relation to shopping orientation. a few studies analysis that fashion orientation should be separated from shopping orientation together. In this study, it consist of four dimensions based on Gunman’s study: fashion interest, fashion leadership and importance of being well dressed and anti fashion attitude.

Gutman and Mill theory

According to Gutman and Mills(1982)mail survey with 6,261 female respondents, it created a fashion scale with its four dimensions: 1) fashion leadership, 2) fashion interest, 3) importance of being well-dressed, and 4) anti fashion attitude. This study was cited in many researches currently.

Fashion Leadership

The character of Fashion leadership is a good sense of fashion trends, knowledge of fashion trends and a self conscious concept of clothing.Many people think that if someone is very familiar for a product, and often ask them related questionsto this person can be called opinion leaders, the advantages of fashion leader is that they can influence people’ attitudes or behavior toward fashion due to the wealth of knowledge, expert ability and correctly filtering variety of product information. Because the new fashion styles need to be adopted for a period of time(Barber & Lobel, 1952), fashion leaders should be very active in social activities and close to other people, they play a vital role in the community and make people accept style innovation by influential power.(Workman & Johnson, 1993). Moreover, because fashion leaders affect not only customer purchase decision but also give the marketers fashion ideas and advice. Summers and King (1969) defined female clothing fashion opinion leaders are care about trying new products and building up fashion knowledge about new clothing collection. Similarly, Myers and Robertson (1972) examined opinion leadership should have wide range of fashion knowledge such as women’s clothing, fashion, cosmetics, and personal care and are willing to discuss fashion thing with people and spend lot of time women’s clothing and fashions. Because fashion leaders prefer share new fashion collection and propose a unique opinion, these features of fashion leader can good to develop the other aspects of fashion orientations such as fashion interest, importance of being-well dressed, and antifashion attitude (Evan, 1989; Morganosky & Vreeman, 1986; Wilkie, 1990).

Fashion interest

According to Katz & Lazarsfield (1960), the definition of fashion interest is that a person who is interested in clothes, makeup and hair styles. High level of fashion interest people prefer spend a large amount of time on exploring the latest fashion collections and trends such as reading fashion magazine and purchasing lastest clothes collection. Also, they collect widely various clothes associated with different events.

The Importance of Being Well Dressed

Importance of being well-dressed refers that standing out group with appropriate dressing, reflecting one’s good life, and dressing representing their opinion of themselves(Summers,Belleau &Wozniak 992). For example, when people go to interview with a well dress, they think the clothes make people have good impression on them. Another example is that people with high attire believe their clothes show that the self-image is. The important part of goals is their self- satisfaction. When it is low, people do not care about their outfit. In other word, they think there is no correlation between their clothing and their self image.

Anti-fashion attitude

Anti-fashion attitude means that people do not care about fashion and not buy so-fashionable clothing. They think that buying fashion clothing is a way to waste money and they do not like listening so-called fashion expert what to wear. In other word, in term of their shopping process and attitudes, they are often apathetic.

people who have the antifashion attitude do not regard current fashion and fashion leaders’ opinions when they make a decision on their clothes. Thus, those with antifashion attitudes tend to display unfavorable attitudes toward fashion. Fashion is a visual communication of one to others, and fashion orientation as a theory of fashion expresses the psychological aspects of self through a self-concept. An individual’s own ideas of self develop self-concept theory, and self-concept influences fashion orientation.

Relevant studies on fashion orientation

In this study, the authors intend to test the scale, originally developed for females, with current male and female fashion shoppers.

Gender roles have greatly impact on fashion shopper in social environment.(Otnes and McGrath, 2001). According to Kwon(1987)research, it found that current male and female fashion shoppers.are affected by different motivating factors. For woman, their concept of clothing may in relation to self-enhancement, whereas man may have positive relationship between the concept of appeal and social status. Another research is that Kwon (1991) found that when woman chose their fashion clothing, they will affect by mood states more than man do. There are many conflict findings about fashion consciousness. Kinley, Conrad and Brown (2001) found that woman are more fashion awareness than men counterpart, other research findings show that young male shoppers are more fashion awareness than female young shoppers(Manrai et al. 2001). Another similar research is that fashion conscious for generation Y male shoppers in the UK were important but there is not clear relationship between fashion consciousness and new fashion style (Bakewell, Mitchell, and Rothwell2000).

In terms of clothing-fashion lifestyle segment, Gutman and Mills (1982) proposed that there is correlation between the concept of fashion orientation and shopping orientation. According to some studies, it examined that people purchase product, shopping orientations will generate different preferences(Darden & Reynolds, 1972). Gutman and Mills(1982) reported that fashion orientations consist of four major dimensions: fashion leadership, fashion interest, importance of being well dressed, and antifashion attitude which connect with shopping behavior, clothing-fashion lifestylesegment, and compulsive consumer purchase behaviour.(Chung, 1996; Darley & Johnson, 1993; Huddleston, Ford, & Bickle, 1993; Lee, Park, & Chung, 2004; Park & Burns, 2005).

Gutman&Mills (1982) defined that fashion orientation to have three dimensions:fashion priority(fashion interest, importance of being well dressed and anti-fashion attitude), time frame and initiative (fashion leadership). Darley & johnson (1993) defined fashion orientation to comprise of fashion innovativeness and fashion opinion leadership. Both Jonathan and William analyzed fashion orientation together with shopping orientation. Little work has been done on fashion orientation separately since many scholars consider fashion orientation and shopping orientation together. Although Huddleston (1993) used fashion orientation to identify lifestyle characteristics that directly related to shopping behavior and Lumpkin (1985) included it as a variable in identifying shopping orientation segments, it might still be necessary to indentify shopping orientation and fashionOrientation separately. In this thesis we define fashion orientation to consist of three dimensions based on Gunman’s elimitation: fashion interest, fashion leadership and importance of being well dressed.

The younger, the more fashionable

Rose (1989) indicated that in the nineteenth century, the difference between children and adult was officially appeared on legal and social, before that children are living with what adults think such as children clothing follow the footsteps of adult clothing. design the children wear was not special in the past. As long as adult clothing are immersed in fashion concept, they will be extended to the field of children’s clothing. This phenomenon from a historical point of view is quite reasonable.

How do fashion enter the field of children’s clothing? Firstly, it is common global phenomenon that our birth rate is gradually dropping. In competitive society, people are busier and busier, the population are getting married at a more and more later age. Under the circumstances, salary figures are is out of proportion to the number of children.

According to United Nations estimation, the world’s total fertility rate from 1950 to 1955 of 4.92 people, down to 2000 to 2005 of 2.67 people (United NationsPopulation Division, 2009); lower total fertility rate in Taiwan, Taiwan’s fertility rate of women in 2006 only 1.115 people, compared to 2.515 in 1980, and plentifully reduced by about 56% (Ministry of the Interior Department of Justice, 2007).

Whether or not in Taiwan or other developing or developed countries, falling birthrates might lead to children’s products a considerable change on supply and demand market. In term of consumer demand , after the raise of quality of life the awaking of individual consciousness, parent are focus more on all aspects of their daily life quality for example, they see the children as their own unique treasure and they expect give them enjoyable ilfe in the material and spiritual life. In modern times, parents are willing to spend the money on their baby; therefore children’s clothing demand will be more and more branding and fashionable, meanwhile and also promote the development of brand management on children’s clothing.

Moreover, going out with the well dressed children do not only show their parents own taste, but also meet their unique personal style. and even some parents want children go to school wearing designer clothing to care about their own and their children feeling.

Consumer demand for children’s wear has entered emotional consumptionthe stage, high purchasing power family toward children’s wear is to meet children’s emotional and spiritual life. When parents chose the children wear, the clothing which is to meet social status of the family or to reflect the style and personality is very important factors for parents.

brand clothing in Japan is expensive, but it is always able to break record of high sales figures in the annual Golden Week in Japan. Those fashionable and young Japanese female consumers who have children usually pursuit fashion, it will not stop because of the mother’s identity, and even want to wear the same style of clothing as their children. These situation has expanded children’s wear market.

In the market of “supply” aspect, due to a small number of children, the amount of consumers are naturally failing. In this case, the children industry wants to survive and trys to introduce high-priced goods to the market to get customer’s attention who has a small number of children and good economy.

In Taiwan, there are lots of luxurious children’s wear reports, it refers a market phenomenon that in many countries high-priced adult clothing brands are starting to have to join with children’s wear. For instance, according to the Apple Daily news, it reported the famous Taiwan brand “les Enphants” decided to start selling Armani Junior children’s clothing; also liberty Times Holiday introduced many Hollywood celebrities’s children’s fashion wear.

Changes in consumer attitude and purchasing power lead high spending power on children’s market the important reason is that fashion concept fights into children’s market. Children’s clothing industry holdsof high spending power parents and focus on parent mind that care about children’s appearance so the industry introduce stylish clothing to children’s wear market. Fashion in contemporary world show how influential on children’s clothing. Moreover the word “fashion”a gradually emerges by many foreign magazines, designers and consumer society and so-called Kids ‘Fashion Expertappears in response to children’s fashion trends. For example, a New York children’s fashion expert Michelle Kouzmine (2005) indicated that children fashion has begun to seriously attention in today.