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1. Introduction
In recent times, marketing literature has witnessed an exponential rise in research related to consumers’ cognitive dissonance (CD) (Kim et al., 2020). Although CD is an old construct, conceptualized by Festinger (1957), its applicability in consumer psychological studies is beyond doubt. Dissonance arises when there is a discrepancy between cognitions post a purchase, leading thereby to a consumer’s psychological discomfort (Kim, 2011). In numerous cases, consumers may depend upon heuristics or disordered opinions and actions to get rid of this confused state of mind (Cappelletti et al., 2011), and typically may end in a “shopper's regret”.
Fashion clothing fulfills multiple purposes and is regarded as an integral part of an individual's identity, personality and self-image (Khare, 2014). Therefore, any negative emotion leading to dissatisfaction after purchase might actually impact a consumer’s intention to repurchase the brand. In this era of intense competition, marketers cannot afford a decline in consumers’ emotional attachment with a brand. Su and Chang (2018) emphasized that both consumer involvement and attachment enhance his/her satisfaction, and subsequently builds brand loyalty in the fast-fashion retailing context. Notably, the apparel industry is mostly considered as being highly impulsive and is often associated with buyer's post-purchase regret (Park et al., 2012; Lin et al., 2018). Prior studies in fashion apparel markets have linked fashion consumption with impulsive purchase (Lin et al., 2018; Imam, 2013), fashion involvement (Sun and Guo, 2013) and cognitive-experiential response (Fu and Kim, 2019) among others. However, hardly any study seems to have focused on segmentation in fashion apparel markets, specifically based on consumers’ dissonance. This study aims to address this gap by (1) clustering fashion apparel consumers based on their dissonance and (2) identifying whether these consumer groups do share any similarities/differences in terms of demographic and purchase characteristics.
Despite the global economic turmoil, the Indian fashion apparel market is projected to gain significantly, with a probable market valuation of $59.3bn by 2022 (BoF-Mckinsey Report, 2019). Primarily, this stupendous growth would be fueled by Indian middle class’s growing aggregate income, which has seen a steady rise from the last decade. Moreover, this segment has a huge market potential, whereby several organized, unorganized, local as well as global players make this market challenging and yet...