• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.60 no.8
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• pp.15-28
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate how gender role attitudes affect clothing involvement and clothing consumption behaviors in young female generation by changing the traditional sex role stereotype. For the research, the survey was conducted for a month from June 15 to July 15, 2009. Data was collected a total of 368 questionnaires from 20's female university students and analyzed 301 questionnaires with SPSS 12.0. The results were as follows. First, the results of factor analysis on gender role attitudes confirmed the multifactorial theory of gender schema: modern masculinity, conservative gender roles, modern feminity based on emotion, gender role openness, and traditional feminity. Second, gender role attitude of female university students was a little conservative but flexible to accommodate masculinity and active in the emotion expression. Third, gender role attitudes had important effects on clothing involvement which was identified into 4 different factors; fashion involvement, clothing interest, performance risk, and social psychological risk. Fourth, gender role attitudes were related with clothing consumption behaviors as like shopping orientation, on-going information search behavior and brand loyalty because of needs for innovation, exhibition and differentiation. Therefore, it was concluded that not only 'androgynous' from modern feminity based on emotion but also 'masculinity' was applied to important fashion marketing strategic tools by statically affecting female consumer's clothing involvement and clothing behaviors.