Fashionable Consumer Technology, IT Fashion, and Consumer Behavior

Traditionally thought of as “uncomfortable bedfellows,” consumer IT and fashion are becoming increasingly intertwined, which has given rise to a unique phenomenon termed “consumer IT fashion”—the collective enthusiasm in society for consumer technology. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain how IT fashion is perceived by individual consumers and subsequently influences consumer behavior. Our research aims to bridge this gap. By differentiating between societal-level and individual-level perceptions of IT fashion, the paper introduces novel constructs associated with IT fashion and fashionable consumer technology, particularly perceived societal-level IT fashion (PSITF, reflecting a person’s perception of society’s views on a technology) and perceived fashionableness of IT (PFIT, capturing a person’s perception of the technology’s fashionableness). Moreover, we identify drivers underlying PSITF and PFIT: collective adoption and social endorsement are the drivers of PSITF, whereas the novelty of IT and IT-identity congruity are the drivers of PFIT. A research model is developed to illustrate how IT fashion influences consumer behaviors, such as adoption and purchasing decisions. We conducted two empirical studies to assess our research model. In Study 1, we focused on consumers’ adoption decision of fashionable technology. The findings validate our conceptualization of IT fashion-related constructs and suggest that consumers are inclined to adopt fashionable IT when they believe it enhances their sense of belonging to a group (i.e., external symbolic value) and allows for self-expression (i.e., internal symbolic value). In Study 2, we explored consumers’ purchasing behavior, focusing on their willingness to pay (WTP) for a fashionable technology compared with the alternative IT product with identical functionalities. The results indicate that whereas consumers do acknowledge the symbolic values associated with using fashionable IT, these values do not necessarily translate into a greater WTP. Our research opens novel theoretical avenues for the exploration of IT fashion and lays the groundwork for future investigations in this domain.