The environmental fashion industry is struggling to compete against fast-fashion brands, who rely on cheap trend-led apparel and ‘wear it once’ consumption habits to achieve commercial success (BBC, 2018; Beard, 2008; Mont, 2008). Literature has shown that consumers continue to make irrational purchase decisions that contradict with their increasingly informed and environmentally minded attitudes (Elaaied et al, 2018; Niinimiki, 2010; Rahman, 2018; Yang et al, 2015). Research has tried to determine how environmental brands should communicate with consumers to gain success within todays commercial markets. This study aims to contribute to a gap in the available research, evaluating how aesthetics within ecofashion advertising impact consumer value perceptions and therefore their purchase intentions.
A conceptual framework was developed using a combination of measurement dimensions used within relevant previous literature (Chen and Chang, 2012; Koller, 2011; Song and Kim, 2018, 2019; Wang and Hsu, 2019). This framework was used to evaluate the results collected through quantitative survey questioning. The survey was distributed online using a snowball sampling method and the data was collected from 178 anonymous participants.
The results within this study showed that advertising aesthetics has a significant impact over consumer values, with a strong mediating effect over the relationship between hedonic/egoistic consumer value perceptions and purchase intention. Moreover, the results showed that advertising aesthetics had a negative mediating effect on consumer value perceptions and purchase intention regularity. These results answered the two research questions posed within this thesis and contributed to the gap within the available literature, by showing what consumer values marketing managers should hope to target through effective advertising aesthetics and how this may impact consumer purchase intentions.
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