Romanian Young Adults' Attitudes Regarding Luxury Fashion Brands: A Behavioral Identity Perspective

Background And Hypotheses

For a long time, the consumer behavior was examined only through the looking glass of traditional economics, that portrays economic actors as individuals with unbounded rationality, unbounded willpower, and unbounded selfishness, without considering psychological implications of their actions. In this respect, when it comes to the fashion industry, the rational consumer should acquire only those items that offer him the highest satisfaction with the lowest costs. Even if we talk about the financial cost, time cost, the opportunity cost, or other types of costs involved in the process of trading goods.

Despite this presumed complete rationality, in terms of consumer behavior, it was signaled a change of paradigms, replacing the rational consumer by a more complex individual (First et al., 1995; Hursh & Roma, 2015).