The factors affecting young Chinese people’s fashion choices - The importance of conspicuous consumption

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which young Chinese consumers are making conspicuous consumption of fashion products. With China's increasingly rapid economic development, the income and consumption levels of the Chinese middle class are rising. Younger people, thanks to higher household income levels, also have more wealth at their disposal. Thus young Chinese are allocating their more spending to products in the fashion industry, including fashion clothing, footwear, and fashion accessories. At the same time, there has been an emergence of young Chinese designers creating their own independent fashion brands. However, it is also young Chinese people who are more likely to make conspicuous consumption, in most cases buying fashion products they do not need or like as much out of comparison with their peers or to build an identity of being fashionable. In my research methodology, I define the young consumers of fashion products as 18 to 30 years old. I will use questionnaires and interviews to explore young Chinese consumers' motivations when purchasing fashion products and their reasons for choosing to consume them or not. The results of the study show that young Chinese people do generally tend to be conspicuous consumers of fashion products, but there are also some other consumption factors, such as price and material, that are valued by young people.