Sharron J. Lennon

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · School of Art Architecture + Design

Social Psychology of Dress, Second Edition presents and explains the major theories and concepts of human behavior relating to dress, drawing from the social science fields of psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The text positions dress as a process in which individual preferences, membership in social groups, and cultural awareness all impact...

The purpose of this research was to investigate perceptions of risks and benefits associated with popular risky fashion practices (tanning and wearing stilettos) among young adult women. Objectives were to (a) determine if fashion interest predicted benefit perceptions among young women, (b) determine the role of antecedents (fashion interest, risk...

This research provides a comprehensive descriptive content analysis of empirical research focused on muscularity and published in refereed journals from 2000 through 2019. This article presents the first part of a two-part series. In this part, the research aims were to characterize the research on muscularity with respect to the methods of inquiry...

The purpose of this research was to provide a comprehensive descriptive content analysis of empirical research focused on muscularity and published in refereed journals in 2000 through 2019. This is the second part of a two-part series in which the research aims were to characterize the research on muscularity with respect to the theories employed,...

Despite the growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI) technology in the retail and service industry, consumer research on AI especially virtual agents (VAs) has been underexplored. To fill the void, this study investigates how consumers build relationships with VAs through the lens of trust. Due to its unique characteristics (e.g., disembodi...

Over the past 25 years, understanding males’ interest in and outcomes of muscularity has developed into a major area of study. Research has been fueled by the development of measures of both the attitudinal and behavioral aspects of a desire to increase muscularity. Our research purpose was to critically assess muscularity research. Using a databas...

To objectify another person is to dehumanize and treat that person as an object. Objectification has interested dress scholars, and some objectification scholars have acknowledged that clothing and bodies act to facilitate or resist objectification. Research purposes were to determine the extent to which dress had been used to evoke objectification...

Many luxury firms have successfully adopted online sales and online sales growth has outperformed offline sales growth. As online luxury sales continue to grow, service expectations in digital and instore channels are also expected to grow. To add to the research literature, the top performing 46 luxury apparel and accessories websites identified i...

Researchers interested in tattoos and tattooing have investigated a range of topics. Since obtaining tattoos has increased in popularity with both men and women, our research purpose was to critically assess research focused on this form of body modification. Using a database search and the ancestry approach we identified 60 empirical refereed jour...

This study takes a longitudinal approach to examine the evolution of e-retail sites in reference to service delivery performance. Using a content analysis approach, product-related e-service attributes currently available on women’s apparel websites were identified and quantified in order to compare them to data collected in an earlier time frame b...

Our research purpose was to assess research addressing relationships between dress and sex. Our review was focused on a 25 years span (i.e., 1990–2015) and on empirical research utilizing human participants published in refereed journals. Three main areas of research emerged: (1) dress used as cue to sexual information, (2) dress and sexual violenc...

Addressing the growing adoption of Black Friday (BF) promotions and related BF misbehavior in the US and elsewhere, we examined the mechanism by which emotions, self-control, and public self-consciousness impact BF consumer misbehavior. We also investigated to what extent women and men differ with regard to how these variables affect misbehavior on...

The current study systematically and thoroughly reviewed the extant literature on e-service quality research to examine 1) how e-service is defined by researchers, 2) how e-service quality is defined by researchers, 3) what e-service quality scales and dimensions have been identified, 4) what outcome variables have been assessed in the e-service qu...

Social Psychology of Dress presents and explains the major theories and concepts that are important to understanding relationships between dress and human behavior. These concepts and theories are derived from such disciplines as sociology, psychology, anthropology, communication, and textiles and clothing. Information presented will provide summar...

Women are depicted in revealing dress in the media and the depictions have costs such as objectification. Objectification theory explains that women in Westernized cultures are looked at, evaluated, and potentially objectified by others. Accordingly, objectifying gaze (by others) evokes self-objectification which has effects such as habitual body a...

There is little research that addresses methodological issues in the context of e-service quality. This study content analyzed e-service quality articles published between 2003 and 2013 to assess methodological issues in this field. Sampling methods (probability vs. nonprobability), use of undergraduates (UGs) in research, service context, geograph...

This research examines how consumers (N = 627) from the three largest world economies, the US, China and Japan, perceive two major apparel brand image dimensions (design and workmanship) in conjunction with brand familiarity for country-of-origin (COO) apparel brands. Using the summary construct theory, this study examines how consumers from three...

Purpose – entailed assessing directions in subject matter content and the types of research strategy employed. In research using human participants, the purposes were to assess: sampling strategy, statements limiting generalizability, incentive use, and the use of undergraduates (UGs) as participants. Finally, with studies utilizing UG participants...

There is little research that addresses methodological issues in the context of e-service quality. This study content analyzed e-service quality articles published between 2003 and 2013 to assess methodological issues in this field. Sampling methods (probability vs. nonprobability), use of undergraduates (UGs) in research, service context, geograph...

The Berg Fashion Library is the ideal resource for teaching and researching dress and fashion. Bibliographic guides have been created to provide teachers, students and researchers with a concise overview of all the key readings and schools of thought within a particular disciplinary perspective. Structured thematically, these clear and accessible a...

The Berg Fashion Library is the ideal resource for teaching and researching dress and fashion. Bibliographic guides have been created to provide teachers, students and researchers with a concise overview of all the key readings and schools of thought within a particular disciplinary perspective. Structured thematically, these clear and accessible a...

The purpose of this research was to provide a critical review of key research areas within the social psychology of dress. The review addresses published research in two broad areas: (1) dress as a stimulus and its influence on (a) attributions by others, attributions about self, and on one's behavior and (2) relationships between dress, the body,...

Fashion is the way we wear our clothes, adorn our bodies, and train our bodies to move [Craik (1994)15. Craik, J. (1994). The face of fashion: Cultural studies in fashion. New York, NY: Routledge.View all references. The face of fashion: Cultural studies in fashion. New York, NY: Routledge]. To assess the state of knowledge about the communicative...

This study examined the effect of product presentation on consumers’ affective/cognitive states and purchase intention. The design of the study was a one factor(product presentation: garment presented flat vs. garment presented on models without faces vs. garment presented on models with faces) between-subject design with a moderator (involvement:...

Consumer misbehaviour is non-normative behaviour in consumption situations and is a form of socially irresponsible behaviour motivated by self interest. Consumer misbehaviours have been widely reported on Black Friday (BF), the day after Thanksgiving in the US when retailers offer ‘doorbuster’ deals. Based on the exchange paradigm and the General A...

The organization of this chapter is as follows. In the first section, we define electronic commerce (hereafter, e-commerce), electronic retailing (hereafter, e-retailing), electronic service (hereafter, e-service), electronic service quality (hereafter, e-service quality) and discuss the importance of e-retailing and e-service quality. In the secon...

Purpose This research extends Mehrabian and Russell's Stimulus‐Organism‐Response model to include both external (i.e. reputation) and internal source of information (i.e. website quality) as stimuli which affect consumers' response systems. The purpose of this paper is to test a more comprehensive model consisting of reputation and website quality...

International Textile and Apparel Association

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which category usage differed in first impressions of American students (a) when researcher-provided category exemplars were used, (b) when respondents were asked to indicate the extent to which they used the categories, and (c) when respondents wrote verbal descriptions so that actual catego...

In the context of an online apparel setting, this study examined the effects of amount of information and music on consumers’ affective states (i.e. pleasure and arousal) and cognitive states (i.e. perceived risk and attitude toward the site), which in turn may affect consumer shopping response (purchase intent). The moderating role of situational...

The organization of this chapter is as follows. In the first section, we define electronic commerce (hereafter, e-commerce), electronic retailing (hereafter, e-retailing), electronic service (hereafter, e-service), electronic service quality (hereafter, e-service quality) and discuss the importance of e-retailing and e-service quality. In the secon...

Consumer misbehavior that harms other consumers and/or retailers has occurred recently during Black Friday (BF) sales. Using a combination of theoretical perspectives, the purpose of our research was to gather information about BF shopping to use in questionnaire development, to investigate potential relationships among the variables identified, an...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore brand association dimensions important to consumers of US specialty apparel brands targeting young women and develop a valid and reliable brand association scale for assessing and monitoring consumers' associations about brands in this market. Design/methodology/approach This study uses mixed methods...

Due to the nature of online shopping, online shoppers are mostly affected by visual cues shown on websites. Visual cues used in the site design and layout (Davis, Wang, & Lindridge, 2008 Davis, L., Wang, S. and Lindridge, A. 2008. Culture influence on emotional responses to on-line store atmospheric cues. Journal of Business Research, 61(8): 806?81...

In two online experiments this research investigated the process by which consumers respond to online apparel stock outages (or stockouts) and examined the effectiveness of managerial responses in mitigating the adverse impact of stockouts. Results of Experiment 1 demonstrated that negative emotions evoked by stockouts depressed perception of store...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine whether service attributes available on women's apparel web sites differ from those available on men's apparel web sites in relation to the nine dimensions of E‐A‐S‐QUAL (E‐S‐QUAL for apparel). Design/methodology/approach Using three separate sources, 97 women's and 97 men's apparel web sites were se...

Purpose – Visual information quality is one of the most important elements that determines online shoppers' experience on a web site. Yet, currently many e‐tailers use poor quality visual information such as small and blurry images. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of visual information quality on online shoppers' a...

Purpose This research is designed to investigate the effects of the apparel online shopping environment on emotions and cognitive and behavioral responses based on Mehrabian and Russell's model, which utilizes the stimulus‐organism‐response (S‐O‐R) paradigm. Design/methodology/approach A total of 230 female undergraduate students participated in a...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of low task relevant cues presented on apparel web sites on consumer emotions (pleasure and arousal) that in turn influence consumer response behaviors (purchase intention and approach behavior) and examine the influence of product involvement as a moderator of the relationship between...

Purpose – This research aims to examine how the amount of information provided on a web site affects consumers' perceived risk, satisfaction, intention to revisit, and purchase intent. Design/methodology/approach – A convenience sample of 220 female college students participated in an online experiment. Confirmatory factor analysis, multivariate an...

The purpose of this study was to examine the combinatorial effects of enduring and momentary mechanisms of cultural identity salience on identity-based apparel brand choices of three Hispanic acculturation segments (Hispanic-dominant, mainstream-dominant, and balanced-bicultural). The hypotheses were empirically tested among Hispanic students at a...

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of various online visual merchandising (VMD) cues—high and low task relevant cues—on consumer pleasure and arousal under different situational involvement (browsing vs. purchasing). A random sample of 1634 female college students participated in an experiment in the context of online apparel shop...

Grounded in the cognitive framework of processing fluency, this study proposes further support for the experiential perspective in aesthetics by positing that aesthetic response to the same object may be malleable, depending on how the symbolic properties of the object interact with different cultural contexts which either facilitate or debilitate...

Two experiments were conducted to disentangle reciprocal relationships between multichannel retailers’ offline and online brand images. Results support the cross-channel effect of prior offline brand image on online brand beliefs (biased assimilation) and that of online performance on offline brand beliefs (impact). Consumers’ online and offline br...

Culturally relevant products, services, and communications play a crucial role in the success of ethnic targeted marketing. Employing a bi-dimensional approach, two studies examine how cultural relevance of product attributes interacts with acculturation level, and situational and contextual factors to affect product attribute evaluations (PAE) of...

The purpose of this research was to examine possible linkages between attitudes toward gender roles, body satisfaction, self-esteem, and appearance management behaviors. Results of a survey of 194 undergraduate women indicated that women holding nontraditional attitudes toward gender roles had higher self-esteem (p < .01), but not body satisfaction...

The purpose of this research was to extend implicit personality theory in an attempt to explain further the inferred relationship between a person's physical characteristics and personal traits. Specifically, this study examined business and professional men's and women's perceptions of the professional image of women as a function of the women's p...

In many physical attractiveness studies, it is clothing and other appearance vari ables that are manipulated, not actual physical beauty, in order to vary physical attractiveness. Thus, results that have been attributed to physical attractiveness may actually be due to clothing attractiveness. The purpose of this research was to determine whether p...

The main objective of this exploratory study was to compare qualitative and quantitative data collection methods and results via an investigation of sex role changes and clothing. Clothing and other appearance variables from videotaped episodes of situation comedies aired from 1953 to 1988 were analyzed for mas culinity and femininity. The results...

Implicit personality theory predicts that individuals will make judgments of others based on salient visible cues in the absence of other information. This research examined the effects of age and body type of the wearer and the cur rency of fashion detail of the garment on the perceived fashionability of the gar ment. College-aged female responden...

This study investigated the relationship between perceived consumer product- attribute importance and individual levels of self-monitoring. In accord with pre vious research findings, it was predicted that (a) people scoring high on the construct of self-monitoring would perceive apparel and furniture product at tributes to be of higher importance...

In a two-part study, the amount and types of information available in television-shopping segments selling apparel were examined. In Phase 1, a content analysis of 60 segments selling apparel was conducted. In Phase 2, using an experimental format, a convenience sample of 128 middle-aged women (M = 46 years) viewed a 6-minute television-shopping se...

The authors used categorization theory to guide research on apparel quality. Respondents were females, 150 students and 55 nonstudent adults, who wrote at least three sentences about the quality of (a) apparel and (b) a blouse. Using content analysis, four classifications were formed to describe the criteria attributes: aesthetic (e.g., stylish), u...

To investigate the role of acculturation variables (Western behavioral adoption, adherence to traditional values) in explaining Chinese consumers' attitudes toward U.S.-made and PRC-made clothing, 3,000 consumers from large Chinese cities were surveyed. Responses were received from 870 men and 999 women. Results of a paired sample t test revealed t...

This research focused on social comparison processes in the context of apparel and beauty product advertisements. Self-esteem, body image, attitudes toward social comparison, and idealized advertising images were investigated via focus group interviews and in a laboratory experiment. Focus group participants reported reading some fashion ads while...

The way in which promotions are framed raises important questions about consumer price judgments. Promotional information may be presented or framed in many ways, each affecting consumers' behavioral responses differently. As promotions are costly, it is important to determine the effect of promotional frames on consumers' price perceptions both du...

Purpose The objective of the paper is to examine the effect of brand name and promotion on consumers' perceived value, store image, and purchase intention. Design/methodology/approach An experiment with a 2×2 (well known versus unknown brand name, promotion versus no promotion) between‐subjects factorial design was conducted and completed by 392 c...

This study investigates the effect of the interplay between a multi-channel retailer's offline and online brand images on consumers' online perceived risk and online loyalty within the framework of a theory of cognitive dissonance. A sample of 671 female college students participated in an experiment using a 2 (prior offline brand image) × 2 (onlin...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of web site atmospherics such as music and product presentation on consumers' emotional, cognitive, and conative responses in online shopping. Design/methodology/approach – A convenience sample of 272 female college students participated in a web experiment employing a 2 (Product pre...

The purpose of the research was to longitudinally investigate rural consumers' online shopping for food and fiber products as a function of satisfaction with local retailing and outshopping. Innovation diffusion theory was used to guide the research. Eight hundred seventy-nine rural consumers from 11 states completed surveys twice (in 2000 and 2003...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether ethnic consumers' consumption of cultural apparel, and attributional responses related to their consumption, is predicted by their strength of ethnic identification. The study also examined whether the consumption of cultural apparel mediates the influence of strength of ethnic identificat...

An experiment assessed the simultaneous effects of two interpersonal attraction factors, physical attractiveness of a target person and similarities in personal characteristics between a target and a perceiver. Participants were exposed to three pictures, each depicting a college student with varying degrees of physical attractiveness and rated the...

Rotation, one type of visual simulation used to create three-dimensional (3-D) experiences, and currently being used for product presentation on some e-tail websites, may create consumer responses. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of rotation in product presentation on the cognitive, affective, and conative responses o...

The present study investigated how different product presentation formats (visual vs. verbal) influence consumer attitudes toward product and purchase intentions in Internet shopping. The overall results from two Web experiments simulating Internet apparel shopping showed that both visual and verbal information had significant effects on affective...

The purpose of this article is to present a comprehensive review and analysis of published research that investigated relationships between the dress of an individual and how that dress affected others' behavior toward the individual. Existing published research was analyzed to determine the types of behaviors investigated, the types of dress manip...

Purpose – The objectives of this study are to: evaluate the task relevance of information components of apparel retail web sites from consumer perspectives; assess the performance of extant apparel retail web sites in providing both high and low task-relevant information components; and explore whether differences in performance exist across differ...

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine visual merchandising (VMD) elements of apparel retail web sites, to describe the state of apparel online VMD and to develop a taxonomy of online VMD cues whose effects can be studied empirically. Design/methodology/approach A total of 50 US and 50 Korean web sites were content analyzed in terms of e...

Statistics reveal that over half of all women are gainfully employed outside the home. Professional working women have a certain status to maintain and it is reasonable to assume that their clothing needs might differ from women who are employed in other occupations and who remain in the home. Recent research has shown that considerable shopping oc...

The classical conditioning theory of learning was used to predict consumer spending on designer jeans. Subjects viewed and responded to eight slides of designer and non‐designer jeans. In addition the presence or absence of designer labelled hangtags was varied so that half of the subjects were exposed to the hangtags and half of them were not expo...

Innovation diffusion theory guided research on the process of online apparel shopping adoption (i.e., changes in online shopping adoption) among rural consumers. Rural consumers in 11 states completed surveys in 2000 ( n = 2,198) and in 2003 (n = 879). Variables measured in 2000 were used to predict online apparel purchasing in 2003; structural equ...

This study examines whether the level of exposure to mass media is related to self-esteem, body image, and eating disorder tendencies in a nonexperimental setting based on Festinger's social comparison theory. A convenience sample of 114 female college students participated in this study. Significant positive relationships between exposure to fashi...

In two studies ethical ideologies, ethical judgments, perceived risk, and purchase intent associated with fashion counterfeit products were examined. Study 1 (N= 115) found that one perceived risk factor (general uncertainty about consequences) influenced intent to purchase fashion counterfeit items, but ethical ideologies did not. Incorporating et...

Content analysis of diet advertisements was performed to examine how diet advertisements portray the Western ideal of feminine beauty and promote dieting in Korean women's magazines in comparison with U.S. women's magazines. Results showed that the Western cultural ideal of feminine beauty and dieting were prevalent in Korean women's magazines. Die...

The purpose of this study was to investigate organizational factors that influence buying/sourcing professionals' socially responsible buying/sourcing (SRB) effort. Survey responses from buying/sourcing professionals from U.S. apparel/shoe companies were analyzed using MANOVA. Analysis revealed that SRB consisted of three dimensions: employment/hum...

Purpose The research purpose was to identify whether changes occurred between 2000 and 2003 in the retail channel use of rural consumers for searching product information and for purchasing food and fiber products and to investigate whether differences existed between channel use groups (i.e. store only shoppers, store and catalog shoppers, and mul...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of psychological traits and shopping environmental factors on impulse buying tendency via television shopping programs and to reflect the inherent nature of the impulsive television shopping environment in the USA as well as the traditional retail channel. Design/methodology/approach A tot...

Purpose – This paper aims first, to identify online service attributes that facilitate efficient and effective shopping, purchasing, and delivery based on the modified E-S-QUAL scale and, second, to evaluate the extent to which current online retailers provide such service attributes as an objective measure of service performance. Design/methodolog...

Because the Internet purchase of apparel is risky, there is a strong need to develop better visual product presentation on-line that may give some sense of fit and other tactile experience to reduce perceived risk and create pleasurable shopping experiences. Toward this end, the effect of product presentation on consumer responses was examined here...