Browsing by Author "Uusimäki, Katriina"

Fashion consumption has a big role in our everyday life. The environmental impact of the fashion industry is significant, so it would be important to change our ways of consuming fashion. In this study, I will find out which factors affect people's choices of fashion consumption, especially from the point of view of consumer psychology. I will use the literature and interview material. In addition, I will find out which factors affect the formation of an individual's fashion consumption behavior. In my research, I used an interview as a method of data acquisition. I conducted research interviews in theme interviews. Interviews consisted four 19-36-year-old consumers, who all had slightly different habits regarding fashion consumption. Each interview was about half an hour long. I recorded the interviews and transcribed them into text. After all there was 32 sheets of transcribed text. In the analysis, I first proceeded classification to the entire material and then emphasized to smaller details and search for meanings. Based on literature, important factors behind fashion consumption were the individual's identity, values and attitudes, motivation and needs, and emotional life. These factors were also clearly featured in research interviews. From the basis of both, literature and interviews, it was possible to distinguish factors influencing between the production of fashion and individual factors. Production factors include factors that are not dependent of the individual’s will, such as advertising and marketing, fashion production processes, policy, and access to information. Individual factors, by their name, are, however, closely connected to the individual, such as personality and identity, interests and social relationships. Based on the research results, it seems that the motivation of the individual plays a major role in making consumer choices and in adapting consumer behavior. What matters is whether the individual is motivated externally or internally to consume in a certain way. As Jansson-Boyd (2010, 118) states, those who are internally motivated tend to pursue a certain behavior longer than those who are externally motivated. Therefore, when seeking to change human consumption behavior, it is important to focus on how to motivate consumers internally for sustainable consumption.