An investigation toward the perception of young Taiwanese consumers’ fashion consumption behaviour

Given an increasingly competitive fashion environment, several multinational corporations have shown their tendency to enter Taiwan’s fashion market. Young Taiwanese consumers seem more than willing to embrace these foreign brands. The purpose of this research is to investigate young Taiwanese consumers’ fashion apparel consumption behaviour, including their evaluations toward “country of origin” effect and to discover their preference of foreign brands; in addition, to explore the issue of young Taiwanese consumers regard fashion apparel as a self-image. The Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) technique was chosen to gain greater insights from the participants. The research was conducted with a semi-structured interview and an in-depth personal interview, which focused on the visual images. A total 20 interviewees, including 10 female and 10 male participants, whose age ranged from 23-30 were recruited to participate in the interview to better understand young Taiwanese consumers’ perception and behaviour. Three themes were emerged in the analysis, including country of origin effect, branding and identity issues. This study supports in part previous research that indicated country stereotype image can significantly influence consumers’ judgement. In addition, young Taiwanese consumers prefer foreign brands and perceived the brand image to be the most important factor to exceed other elements. Further, the findings confirm that young Taiwanese consumers considered fashion apparel to represent status and to develop self-identity. An empirical understanding of young Taiwanese consumers would provide valuable information for these foreign brands and to assist in developing efficient marketing strategy before they tap into Taiwan’s fashion apparel market