African Generation Y Male Students’ Fashion Consciousness Behaviour

Abstract

While there have been numerous studies directed at addressing the female Generation Y cohort’s fashion consumption patterns, there is a dearth of published research focused on male consumer fashion conscious behaviour, especially not that of the African Generation Y (hereafter referred to as African Generation Y) males. Born between 1986 and 2005, in 2013, African Generation Y individuals made up approximately 83 percent of South Africa’s total Generation Y cohort and 38 percent of the country’s 52 981 991 population in 2013. The aim of this study was to determine the causal relationships between African Generation Y male students’ need for fashion awareness, fashion consciousness and fashion conscious behaviour. A self-administered questionnaire was administered on a single cross-sectional sample of 400 African Generation Y male students at three university campuses in the Gauteng province. The data was analysed by means of exploratory factor analysis, correlation and regression analysis. The findings suggest that African Generation Y males’ fashion awareness and fashion consciousness has a significant postive influence on their fashion conscious behaviour. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n21p121