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Psychological Age and Fashion Innovations

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Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference

Abstract

Research on fashion innovativeness has consistently found both male and female fashion innovators to be younger than other clothing buyers. Although this is a potentially useful descriptive finding, further research should be devoted to greater understanding of the relationship between age and fashion innovativeness. An opportunity is afforded by the concept of psychological age or how consumers feel and look, their interests, and what they do. Data from a sample of 607 randomly selected middle-class adults from five states confirmed the weak negative correlation between chronological age and fashion innovativeness (r= −.23) and showed in addition that even when the effect of chronological age was statistically controlled, fashion innovators reported younger psychological age than others, that is, they said that they felt, looked, behaved, and had younger interests than non-innovators.

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Goldsmith, R.E., Stith, M.T. (2015). Psychological Age and Fashion Innovations. In: Dunlap, B. (eds) Proceedings of the 1990 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13254-9_86

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