Fashion Magazines No Longer in Vogue? Consumer Motivations to Choose Digital Fashion Media for Information Seeking
Date
2016-05
Authors
Jones, Aimee N.
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Abstract
With the significant advances of information and mobile technology, digital fashion media including fashion blogs and other social media outlets, has become a new, burgeoning source of fashion information acquisition among general consumers, especially millennial consumers. In the meantime, the sales of print fashion magazines, which have long been traditional media for fashion information, have been steadily declining over recent years. In the midst of the rise of new fashion opinion leaders, fashion bloggers or reviewers on social media, why do millennials consumers turn to relying on those fashion opinion leaders rather than reading fashion magazines? These questions remain unanswered given extant research on the motivations of millennial consumers to use digital fashion media for information seeking is extremely limited. In order to address this gap, this study explores millennial consumers’ preferences of sources in acquiring fashion information, understand the hidden motivations underlying the behavior, and determine the role of digital fashion media in fashion information seeking. The study is based upon a qualitative method by conducting six focus group interviews with twenty four millennial consumers who are interested in and highly involved in fashion. The results of this study will provide an important timely contribution to a building rigor on theoretical literature on fashion information seeking and functional theory. In addition, by providing the understanding of the readers’ behavior and underlying needs, this study will help both traditional media, fashion magazines, and emerging new media, digital fashion media, utilize this understanding in order to strategically respond to the changes and maintain readership of young consumers.
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Keywords
fashion, fashion blogs, digital media, social media, consumer decision making process, fashion opinion leadership, information seeking, fashion magazines, functional theory, consumer motivations, consumer behavior
Citation
Jones, A. N. (2016). Fashion magazines no longer in vogue? Consumer motivations to choose digital fashion media for information seeking (Unpublished thesis). Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.