Poppin’ Tags: How Consumers Communicate Uniqueness with Vintage Clothing

Abstract

Introduction. Aesthetics in the 21st Century has been marked by the coexistence of many styles, with consumers often in charge of creating their own sense of personal style (Postrel, 2003). However, convergence of global trends has led to similarity across brands and price points, which makes it difficult to create an individualized appearance when shopping solely at new clothing stores. Some consumers have sought alternative sources, including thrift shops, vintage stores, clothing swaps, garage sales, do-it-yourself projects, and professionally redesigned clothing (Janigo, 2011;Reiley, 2008). The purpose of this research was to explore how consumers communicate uniqueness to others with their clothing.Significance. In previous research, two groups of female consumers similar in age were studied through in-depth qualitative interviews, including both vintage and new clothing wearers, for their means of creating a unique appearance (Reiley, 2008). The study yielded rich descriptions of the aesthetics of these consumers and how they incorporated different sources of clothing. The Desire for Unique Consumer Products (DUCP) scale developed by Lynn and Harris (1997) was used to gauge individuals' interest in presenting a unique appearance. However, due to a limited size and relatively homogeneous sample of the prior study, it was necessary to further explore these phenomena with a larger, more heterogeneous sample.Methods and Sample. College students often spend discretionary income on clothing, and an art focused school was thought to be a prime setting for unique individuals to thrive. Questionnaires were administered in class meetings at a small Midwestern private art college. Students age 18 to 55 were recruited through convenience sampling. A total of 132 students (85 female and 47 male, mean age of 22.6 years) from 13 different applied art majors responded. Based on the literature, individuals with a high DUCP score should be more likely to buy and wear clothing from sources such as used clothing and vintage stores. Additionally, students in fashion-related majors should have a higher DUCP score than students in other majors. The instrument included closed-ended questions about stores at which they normally shop, reasons for selecting those stores, definitions of unique clothing items, percentage of vintage clothing (25 years or older) in their wardrobes, and how often they wore vintage. The survey also included the eight-item five-point Likert type (one as strongly disagree and five as strongly agree) Desire for Unique Consumer Products (DUCP) scale (Cronbach's α > 0.78) to determine whether or not participants perceived a unique appearance as important in their daily lives. Descriptive statistics and a series of ANOVA tests were used to analyze results through IBM SPSS Statistics 22.Results. Following Lynn and Harris (1997), we created summated scores by adding the eight DUCP items together into a total DUCP score for each individual. ANOVA was used to compare the DUCP scores of fashion majors (n = 36, mean ...