The Fashion Trend In Malaysia

The fashion trend in Malaysia is changing from time to time. There is no absolute trend that really stands for a long period of time. Kuala Lumpur particularly has many shopping malls such as Pavillion, Sogo, Times Square and so on that fashion-goers can look for the trend that they prefer. Each of this shopping centre offer various kind of design which cater to different preferences of customers.

Buying goods such as fashion in order to bolster one’s image is most likely a motivation that plays some role in most buying behaviours, but it might be particularly imperative when people engage in non-planned “spur of the moment” purchases. Such impulsive buys without careful consideration and prior intent are often a pattern or the way most of the Malaysian college students always do.

Problem Statement

Past investigations into impulse purchase and non-response have only touched on the subject area and not fully explored the influence of this on either the consumer or the retailer. A lot of the research has looked into different sections within the model suggested, but nobody has built a complete framework which shows the linkages and the variables that impact throughout the process.

Today’s fierce competition and the resemblance of merchandise force every segment of the fashion industry to exploit every aspects of merchandising to improve the desirability of products. Thus, this study is trying to integrate student’s fashion oriented impulse buying behaviours (fashion involvement, positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency and impulse buying) into a research framework to comprehend better understanding of student’s impulse buying behaviour in fashion.

It is essential for us to be familiar with to what extent the variables such as fashion involvement, positive emotion, and hedonic consumption tendency affect or give impact on student’s fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour. How fashion involvements influence impulse buying behaviour? Is there positive relationship between positive emotion and impulse buying? To what degree hedonic consumption tendency have an effect on student’s fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour.

With the forces of so many competing retailers in Malaysia, we have to find out what are the factors that influence student’s fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour.

Research Objectives

General Objectives

This research is to examine the factors that affect fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour among college students in Malaysia.

Specific Objectives

To review past literature and previous research done on fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour.

To analyze the relationships among fashion involvement, positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency, and fashion-oriented impulse buying.

To evaluate the relationship between consumer characteristics and fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour.

Research Questions

How positive emotions affect impulse buying behaviour?

Does hedonic consumption tendency affect impulse buying behaviour?

To what extent fashion involvements lead to impulse buying behaviour?

What is the relationship between fashion involvement and impulse buying behaviour?

Literature Review

What is impulse buying behaviour?

Impulse buying refers to making unplanned and sudden purchases (Rook, 1987). According to Bayley and Nancarrow (1998), impulse buying behaviour is a sudden, compelling hedonically complex buying behaviour in which the rapidity of an impulse decision process precludes thoughtful and deliberate consideration of alternative information and choices. Impulse buying usually takes place when a consumer feels a forceful motivation that turns into a desire to purchase a commodity instantly (Rook, 1987).

Consumer impulse buying is an important concept along with product involvement as they are involved with a specific product (Jones, et al., 2003). For clothing, fashion-oriented impulse buying refers to a person’s awareness or perception of fashionability attributed to an innovative design or style (Stern, 1962). According to Han, et al. (1991), fashion-oriented impulse buying occurs as a customer sees the product in a new style and buys it because they are motivated by the suggestion to buy new products. Early study into impulse buying behaviour focused on the typology of impulse buying and understanding the role of fashion involvement in forecast fashion-oriented impulse buying. Impulse buying was classified as four types which are planned impulse buying, reminded impulse buying, fashion-oriented impulse buying and pure impulse buying (Han, et al., 1991).

Fashion Involvement

Product involvement is important to understanding consumer attitudes and behaviour because involvement is a central motivation factor that shapes the purchase decision-making process (Engel, Black and Miniard, 1993). Furthermore, products such as apparel are multifaceted in features and characteristics, lending multiple dimensions that shape consumer involvement. Involvement (product centrality) has been identified as being at the heart of the person-object relationship (O’Cass, 2000). In addition, involvement is viewed as being correlated to the interaction between an individual and an object, that is a relationship variable. According to O’Cass (2004), involvement is defined as the extent to which the consumer views the focal activity as a central part of their life, a meaningful and engaging activity in their life in the context of consumer activity and fashion clothing.

Fashion involvement refers to the degree of interest with the fashion product category (e.g. apparel) in fashion marketing. Fashion involvement is used primarily to predict behavioural variables related to apparel products such as product involvement, buying behaviour, and consumer characteristics (Browne and Kaldenberg, 1997; Fairhurst, et al., 1989; Flynn and Goldsmith, 1993). For example, O’Cass (2000, 2004) found fashion clothing involvement linked highly to personal characteristics (i.e. female and younger) and fashion knowledge, which in turn influenced consumer in making purchase decisions. Also, Park, et al. (2006) found that fashion involvement and positive emotion had positive effects in consumers’ fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour, with fashion involvement having the utmost effect.

Positive Emotion

Positive emotions are defined as affects or moods, which determine intensity of consumer decision-making reported by Watson and Tellegen (1985). Affect or mood has been identified as a variable that strongly influences a number of actions including impulse buying purchasing (Gardner and Rook, 1998; Rook, 1987; Rook and Gardner, 1993). Emotion that encompasses affect and mood is an important factor in consumer decision making. Typically, emotion is classified into two orthogonal dimensions (e.g. positive, negative) (Watson and Tellegen, 1985). The positive feelings may be alert, enthusiastic and active. It is a situation of high energy, full concentration and pleasant engagement. Low positive affect involves sadness and lethargy (Watson, Clark, and Tellegen, 1988). The contrary of positive affect is negative affect, which involves a feeling of distress and non-pleasurable engagement that includes a range of aversive mood situations, as well as fear, disgust, anger, guilt, etc. Low negative affect suggests serenity and calmness.

Positive emotion can be elicited by an affective disposition, individual’s pre-existing mood, and reaction to current environmental encounters (e.g. desired items, sales promotions). Consumers in more positive emotional states tend to have reduced decision complexity and shorter decision times (Isen, 1984). Furthermore, when compared to negative emotion, consumers with positive emotion exhibited greater impulse buying because of feelings of being unconstrained, a desire to reward themselves, and higher energy levels (Rook and Gardner, 1993). Negative affect, experienced concurrently, might negatively influence one’s urge to buy impulsively, that is, negative moods might decrease approach behaviour. The effects of negative moods on behaviour are vague. Sometimes they produce effects similar to those produced by positive moods, while at other times they produce opposite effects. (Clark and Isen, 1982).

Babin and Babin (2001) found that in stores consumer’s purchasing intentions and spending as well as perceptions of quality, satisfaction and value can largely be influenced by emotions. Beatty and Ferrell (1998) found consumer’s positive emotion was associated with the urge to buy impulsively. This supports earlier findings that impulse buyers are more emotional compared to non-impulse buyers (Weinberg and Gottwald, 1982). They often over spend when shopping because impulse buyers exhibit greater positive feelings such as pleasure, excitement, and joy ((Donovan and Rossiter, 1982).

Hedonic Consumption Tendency

Hedonic consumption includes those behavioural aspects related to multi-sensory, fantasy, and emotional consumption which are driven by benefits such as fun using the product and aesthetic appeal (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982). Emotional arousal refers to the arousal feelings such as from joy to jealousy passing by fear and rapture. Consumers make certain decisions about their consumption while seeking for certain feeling arousal effects (Hirschman and Holbrook, 1982). This of course is possible since consumers’ emotional engagement stands behind their choices of certain products even the simplest everyday consumption products (Levy, 1959). Hedonic research’s main goal is to explore the consumer’s capacity of perceiving and experiencing products and services thr4ough their sensors (Holbrook and Moor, 1987). The products purchased during these excursions emerge to be selected without prior planning and they represent an impulse buying event since the goal of the shopping experience is to provide satisfaction of hedonic needs. With respect to hedonic consumption, impulse buying plays an important role in fulfilling hedonic desires (Hausman, 2000; Piron, 1991; Rook, 1987). This role supports a conceptual link between hedonic shopping motivation and impulse buying behaviour.

Attempts by consumers to satisfy hedonic motivation, such as self-esteem, social needs, and self-actualization, appear to impel consumers to make specific purchases through impulse buying to satisfy these particular needs (Hausman, 2000). Hedonic motivation implies that consumer’s efforts to satisfy self-esteem and social needs may unintentionally lead to impulse buying, in that the purchases are incidental to the more important need to interact and garner approval from a significant other or a group (Bayley and Nancarrow, 1998; Dittmar and Drury, 2000).

For fashion products, Park, Kim and Forney (2006) found that hedonic consumption tendency was associated with positive feelings which influence impulse buying behaviour, especially fashion-oriented impulse buying. Therefore, hedonic consumption tendency is strongly associated with positive emotion, which leads to impulse buying of apparel products. Fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour is motivated by new version of fashion styles and brand image salience which drive consumers to hedonic shopping experiences (Goldsmith and Emmert, 1991).

Theoretical Framework

Adapted from: Park, E. J., Kim, E. Y., & Forney, J. C. (2006). A structural model of fashion-oriented impulse buying behavior. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 10(4), 433−446.

The model depicted to examine consumers’ impulse buying toward fashion products. It illustrates the relationship between four variables which are fashion involvement, positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency and impulse buying. In this relationship, fashion involvement will influence positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency and impulse buying. Furthermore, positive emotion and hedonic consumption tendency will influence impulse buying. Moreover, hedonic consumption tendency will influence positive emotion.

Research Methodology

Research Design

Research design serves as a master plan of the methods used to collect and analyze the data (Hair, Bush and Ortinau, 2006). Determine the apposite research design is a role of the information research objectives and the specific information requirements. This study has chosen quantitative research as it seeks to quantify the data and conclude the evidence. As quantitative research is based on large, representative samples, and usually applies some form of statistical analysis (Malhotra and Peterson, 2006). Quantitative research is appropriate in this research since it enable to generalize the results from the sample to the population interest.

Descriptive Research

Descriptive research was conducted in this study. Descriptive research is a type of conclusive research that can be used for a number of purposes such as to describe the characteristics of relevant groups including consumers, sales people, organization, or market areas to estimate the percentage of units specified population exhibiting a certain behaviour, to determine the perceptions of product characteristics, to determine the degree to which marketing variables are associated and to make specific predictions (Malhotra and Peterson, 2006). Descriptive research is also used to describe the characteristic of a population and phenomenon, and it seeks to answer to who, what, when, where and how question (Hair, Bush and Ortinau, 2006).

Data Collection Methods

Data had described as the fact presented to researcher from the study environment. Furthermore, data can be further divided into primary data and secondary data (Coorper and Schindler, 2001). The primary data were collected by survey and the secondary data was collected through internet as well as printed material to support the research. Primary data and secondary data providing valuable information and insights in terms of the factors affecting fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour among college students.

Primary Data

Primary data refer to the information obtained firsthand by the researchers on the variables of interest for the specific purpose of study (Sekaran, 2003). Primary data is needed to obtain a specific, relevant and up-to-date data from a large group of respondents. Questionnaire survey is technique where a person conducts a survey by asking questions to a respondent based on standardised question and procedure from questionnaire. It can be conducted in various methods such as self-administered survey and mall intercept.

A self-administered survey was conducted in this research because it can sample a large number of people in order to get more significant results. It is less expensive than interview and lack of interviewer bias. In addition, anonymity and privacy encourage more frank and honest responses.

Secondary Data

According to Burns and Bush (2006), secondary data refers to data which is already available as they collected for some purpose other than solving the present problem. This data has been collected and is easy to get through journals articles, books, and internet.

This research has been supported by the secondary data which obtained through the academic journals from external resources. All journals were obtained from several online database and website such as Emerald, ProQuest, as well as Google Scholar. Apart from that, this research also included resources from books such as Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Research for further investigation.

Sampling Design

The population of this study is the college students in Klang Valley. Anonymous questionnaires were randomly administered to different college students with the aim to acquire more reliable and accurate results on factors affecting fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour among college students.

Target Population

The target population of respondents selected for this research was from the college students.

Sampling Location

Questionnaires are administered to college students in Malaysia, there were four sampling which are SEGI University College, INTI College, Sunway College and Olympia College.

Sampling Elements

The respondents of the survey were referred to individual from different colleges.

Variables Measurement

Variables

Measurement

Fashion Involvement

I consider fashion clothing to be central part of my life.

I am interested in fashion clothing.

Fashion clothing is important to me.

I usually have one or more outfits of the very latest style.

Positive Emotion

I feel a sense of thrill when I am buying fashion.

I feel excited when making a purchase of purchasing fashion.

I feel very satisfied when I purchase fashion.

I am always enthusiastic in buying fashion

Hedonic Consumption

Shopping for fashion satisfies my sense of curiosity.

I get happy from shopping for fashion.

It gives me pleasure to purchase clothes.

Clothes are pleasure to me

Impulse Buying

I often buy fashion spontaneously.

I often buy fashion without thinking.

If I see a new fashion style, I will buy it.

I am a person who makes unplanned purchases in clothing.

When I go shopping, I buy clothes that I had not intended to purchase.

I like to buy new clothes that just come out.

Source: Develop for research

Questionnaire Design

Self-administered questionnaire is used as an instrument to carry out the survey. The questionnaire can help to reach out a large number of respondents and has advantage in faster to collect results from respondents. It was design in English form and consists of three parts which were General Information (Part One), Construct Measurement (Part Two) and Demographic Information (Part Three).

In Part One, it include general information such as the type of universities, whether they like fashion or not, the course taken by respondents, average living expenses per month, frequency of purchasing clothes and amount spending on clothes each month. In Part Two, it is the construct measurement of fashion involvement, positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency and impulse buying. Respondents need to complete a series of demographic questions that required some brief personal information such as hobby, gender, race and age.

Structured questions such as multiple choices, dichotomous and scale has used in the questionnaire. The measurements of Part One and Part Three has used nominal scale and ordinal scale that use boxes as labels or tags for identifying and classifying objects. Nonetheless, all of the construct in model were measured by using rating scale which is Likert scale. Likert scale enables respondents to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with a series of mental belief or behavioural belief about the given measurements that measured the fashion involvement, positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency and impulse buying behaviour.

Data Analysis

The data would be analyse by the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and all the information which are relevant to the research questions and hypothesis will be discuss and analyse. Descriptive analysis will be presented in the first section, followed by the scale measurement which provides the results of reliability analysis and the inferential analysis will be presented in last section.

Limitation

Scarcity of secondary data: Necessary records, publication may not be available. This constraint may narrow the scope of the study. In addition, it’s hard to find full-text article in a journal or database.

Resource constraints: Efforts will be made to accomplish the study according to the objectives. But as the research team consists of only one member, it may be difficult to cover in details.

Word limitation: The proposal may lacks of details due to words limitations.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, the research has fulfilled its objective to examine the factor (fashion involvement, positive emotion, hedonic consumption tendency and impulse buying behaviour) affecting fashion-oriented impulse buying behaviour among college students.