The research investigates the relationship between gender, materialistic values, and impulsive behavior with fashion clothing involvement. Furthermore this study investigates different decision-making styles and the influence of the marketing mix to the purchasing process. A survey was conducted with a sample of 295 consumers. Factor analysis using principle components with varimax rotation was used. Also, the Kruscall-Wallis test was conducted in order to reveal interactions and relationship between different variables. According to research findings young adults have developed materialistic values and therefore material goods are used as symbols by them. The reinforcement of a person's self-image is probably a motivation that plays significant role in individuals purchasing decisions. Thus consumers are engaged in non-planned purchases, which are considered as impulsive. Moreover, men are those who are more involved with fashion clothing in order to bolster their self-image. However women are those who appear to be more impulsive in their purchasing decisions.
Top2. Consumer Behavior Theories
Consumers’ behaviour is the decision processes and acts of people involved in purchasing and using products. People consume in order to fulfil and satisfy their needs and they have different motivations concerning the purchase of different products.
Sometimes consumers are driven to a purchase through logical arguments but other times are persuaded more by emotional or symbolic appeals. Thus one theory of decision-making behavior generally is the cognitive paradigm perspective which focuses on the decision-making process, of an individual, as a sequel of thought processes when making the decision.
According to Assael (1987) “consumer choice is a problem-solving and decision making sequence of activities, the outcome of which is determined principally by the buyer’s intellectual functioning, and rational, goal-directed processing of information”. This implies according to Markin &Narayana (1975) that “the consumer is an intelligent, rational, thinking, and problem solving organism, which stores and evaluates sensory inputs to make a reasoned decision”. Mayor models of consumer behavior such as (O’Cass, 2001; Pliner et al., 1990; Engel & Blackwell, 1982) assume that consumers are able to attain large amount of information and are also able to handle and process this amount of information in order to compare and evaluate the entire alternative products related to their needs before they come up to the best solution to them. Most of other cognitive models follow the same patterns. The stages of the model are: 1 Problem definition: a stimulus from the environment triggers information processing from which a consumer perceives a need.2. Information search: the consumer collects information to aid in the satisfaction of the need.3.Evaluation of alternatives: a process of problem solving, which will be affected by a range of influences. 4. Purchase. 5. Post-purchase evaluation: consumption will be followed by an evaluation to determine whether the need was satisfied or not (Engel & Blackwell, 1982) .