Fashion consumer groups and online shopping at private sale sites

Abstract

AbstractWith the increasing popularity of private sale sites, it has become more important to understand those shoppers regularly visiting these sites. To date, no published studies have reported on shoppers of private sale sites. The current study was designed to divide shoppers of private sale sites into distinct fashion consumer groups based on their levels of fashion leadership, and to examine their differences in shopping behaviours. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 164 women aged 18 and older who were members of at least one private sale site. The respondents were recruited mainly using a snowball sampling technique, which relied on chain referrals to identify eligible participants. Factor analysis results suggested that fashion leadership consisted of two dimensions: fashion opinion leadership and fashion innovativeness. The respondents were divided into four groups, named fashion followers, fashion opinion leaders, fashion innovators and innovative communicators, based on their scores on the two dimensions of fashion leadership. In order to compare characteristics of the four groups, a series of anova were conducted and significant group differences were found in hedonic shopping, site visit frequency, and purchase intention. The significantly higher levels of visit frequency and purchase intention for innovative communicators indicate that this group represents a valuable market segment for online private sale companies to target. Implications for future research and limitations were also discussed.