Economic Factors In Clothing

When talking to the shoppers of second-hand clothing, the aspect of the economical motivation was still an important motivator as the literature suggested it would be. All the four sub-factors of economical motivations - economic necessity, fair price, gratificative role of price and bargain hunting - were present.

However, when it comes to using the phrase economic necessity it is important to clarify what is meant with the word necessity. Four respondents mentioned that their economic situation was a motivator for buying second-hand clothing, yet only one of these four said that the price was the most important motivation due to her being a student. On the other hand, as compared to Williams and Windebank’s study (2003), this study was

So, while we did not see a pattern depending on the life-courses as we have defined them, this is where the possibilities of differing motivations of life-stages can come in the most. What we can say is that none of the respondents who mentioned necessity were currently working full-time, although there were several others who did not work-full time either who did not mention this aspect. Based upon the current and previous economic status of some respondents, we tentatively posit that the aspect of economic necessity is a motivator that differs depending on the life-course but specifically in the financial life-stage the consumer is in rather than the career related life-stage or family-life cycle. In addition, several respondents also made the link that students bought second-hand clothing, who are by common association ‘poor’. At the same time, this link of economic necessity to financial situation seems logical from the point of view that second-hand clothing mostly is cheaper and that link was also suggested by several authors (Williams, 2003; Williams & Windebank, 2003; Alexander, Cryer & Wood, 2008; Mitchell & Montgomery,

Gratificative role of price, more specifically that ‘less justification is needed’ or that they buy more because the money goes to a good cause (like charity) is connected to the hedonic motivation that being thrifty allows them to feel less guilty about buying more, or treating themselves (Bardhi & Arnould, 2005). In addition, we believe that the gratificative role of price is connected to what we classified as a utilitarian motivation, that they were able to care less about what happened to the clothing they bought. Looking at the life-stage point of view, people in the career-life stages of being a young professional or professional in their prime seemed more interested than students or retirees in the gratificative role of price. Perhaps this has to do with the fact that their clothing need for work are different than students or retirees (Azevedo et al. 2009) indicating they might need more different clothing and therefore be concerned about getting more for