When it comes to purchasing pre-owned fashion items online, the physical attractiveness of the previous owner and the racial similarity between the seller and buyer appear to play crucial roles in influencing consumer decisions, according to a new study published in the Journal of Business Research. The findings highlight how these factors significantly reduce perceived concerns about cleanliness and increase the likelihood of purchase.
The fashion industry has been witnessing a transformative shift from outright ownership to a model of collaborative consumption – a way of sharing and redistributing goods that has gained popularity with the advancement of online platforms such as Depop and Poshmark. Researchers have long studied the economic, environmental, and social benefits of this shift. However, a deeper understanding of the barriers preventing consumers from embracing this model, especially in the fashion sector, remained underexplored. This gap in knowledge led researchers to embark on this novel study.
“My research has revolved around the phenomenon of collaborative consumption (e.g., renting, thrifting, swapping), which promotes the recirculation of goods and the reduction of waste. My fascination lies in exploring the concept of contamination perception that arises during the exchange of shared items, and I’ve been studying various factors that may amplify or diminish this perception,” explained study author Naeun Lauren Kim, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.
The research was carried out in several steps. Initially, a pretest involved 34 female undergraduate students who helped select fashion items and images of sellers for the main study. They rated seven fashion items (coat, shirt, skirt, jacket, dress, pants, and handbag) on how much they would be in contact with the body and also rated the attractiveness of eight female model headshots. A shirt, having the highest degree of body contact, and a handbag, with the lowest, were chosen for the study. Similarly, images rated highest and lowest for attractiveness were selected.
For the main study, a fictitious company named ‘Fashion Connect’ was created to avoid any biases from existing brand familiarity. The researchers developed a mock website for this company, showcasing fashion items at price points similar to those on real platforms. The study participants, American women over 18 years old, were recruited through MTurk, a platform for sourcing participants for various tasks. The researchers managed to gather 242 valid responses from these participants.
In the main study, participants were shown different scenarios involving the sale of the selected fashion items (shirt and handbag) by sellers varying in attractiveness and racial similarity. The women then rated their likelihood of purchasing these items using a series of measurements, such as perceived cleanliness and purchase intention, on a seven-point scale. The study also included variables like age, income, and education level as controls.
The researchers found that items associated with an attractive previous owner were perceived as cleaner and were more likely to be purchased compared to those linked with a less attractive owner. This effect held true regardless of whether the item was a shirt or a handbag, indicating that the level of physical contact with the item did not significantly alter these perceptions.
Additionally, items sold by a racially similar seller were viewed as less contaminated and had higher purchase intentions than those from a racially dissimilar seller. Like the findings on physical attractiveness, the impact of racial similarity did not vary with the type of item, suggesting a broad applicability of these influences across different product types.
These findings provide valuable insights into the psychological factors driving consumer behavior in the online secondhand fashion market. The influence of the seller’s physical attractiveness and racial similarity on perceived cleanliness and purchase intentions challenges traditional assumptions about consumer concerns in the sharing economy. This knowledge can be invaluable for businesses operating in this space, offering new strategies to enhance customer engagement and trust.
“The concept of contamination has been generally associated with negative connotations and reactions,” Kim told PsyPost. “However, this study uncovered ways in which contamination can exert a positive influence on consumers’ perceptions of the object. Specifically, the factors of physical attractiveness and racial similarity of the contamination source (i.e., the previous owner of shared items) were identified to create a positive contamination effect in the secondhand purchasing context.”
Despite its revealing insights, the study acknowledges certain limitations. The sample was predominantly Caucasian and female, suggesting a need for more diverse participant pools in future research to understand broader consumer behavior patterns. Moreover, the study was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, a factor that might have since altered consumer perceptions about cleanliness and contamination in online shopping.
Future research could explore additional variables that might amplify these findings, such as lifestyle congruency between the seller and buyer or the duration and frequency of item usage. Understanding male consumer behavior in this context also presents an intriguing avenue for exploration.
“Other variables, such as non-physical attributes of the seller (e.g., lifestyle congruency), might contribute to magnifying the positive contamination effect,” Kim noted. “To overcome limitations associated with the study sample, which is predominantly female and Caucasian, collecting new data that encompasses greater diversity is recommended.”
The study, “Does beauty encourage sharing? Exploring the role of physical attractiveness and racial similarity in collaborative fashion consumption“, was authored by Naeun Lauren Kim and Byoungho Ellie Jin.