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MODELLING INTRA-GENERATION Y FASHION CLOTHING BUYING BEHAVIOUR. A COMPARATIVE STUDY CENTRED ON MOTIVATION, STORE SELECTION AND BRAND LOYALTY
Tudor Edu, Rodney Graeme Duffett, Iliuta Costel Negricea, Norbert Haydam

ABSTRACT. The study investigates fashion clothing buying behaviour, appraising motivation, stores, gender, income sources, buying frequency and budget for clothes, pursuing to establish if brand loyalty exists for a part of Generation Y (25-29 years old). Samples of 400 Romanians and South Africans, principal component analysis and logistic regressions were employed. Rational buying behaviour of fashion clothes for Romanian and South African nationals and brand loyalty for the South Africans were established. For this segment, fashion clothing brands can be positioned by organisations using product traits/matching or price, assessing differences between nationalities when focusing on international markets. This study enhances the literature by explaining Generation Y segment's buying behaviour and expanding the Generation Y heterogeneity idea to this segment considering the identified apparel brand loyalty disparities. The model can be upgraded by including more metric scales, one clothing category brand diversity buying, domestic/imported brands and other demographic and behavioural variables .

KEYWORDS:  consumer behavior, fashion clothing, Generation Y, Romania, South Africa, principal component analysis (PCA), logistic regression.

JEL classification:  D12, M31, C51, C53.