Riané C. Dalziel

The cosmetic industry is a highly lucrative market in South Africa. Individuals of the Generation Y cohort represent an essential current and future market segment for various industries, including the beauty product industry. The purpose of this study is to determine the direct and indirect effects of variety seeking and status consumption on attitudes through beauty product innovativeness among female Generation Y students. This study used a self-administered questionnaire. The sample includes female Generation Y students at a traditional university, a comprehensive university, and a university of technology in the Gauteng province. The study yielded 610 adequate responses. The data were analyzed using principal component factor analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product-moment correlation, and path analysis with mediation tests. The study presents a four-factor model: status consumption, variety seeking, beauty product innovativeness, and consumer attitude. Status consumption statistically, significantly, and positively affect beauty product innovativeness (β = 0.350, p = 0.000 < 0.01) and consumer attitude (β = 0.107, p = 0.053 < 0.01). Variety seeking has a statistically significant and positive influence on beauty product innovativeness (β = 0.276, p = 0.000 < 0.01) but an insignificant on consumer attitude (β = 0.043, p = 0.459 > 0.01). Lastly, beauty product innovativeness was a statistically significant predictor of attitude (β = 0.286, p = 0.000 < 0.01). These results suggest that beauty product innovativeness mediates the relationship between variety-seeking and consumer attitudes of the Generation Y cohort toward beauty products.

Impulse buying is a key marketing strategy to boost online sales in fast fashion, as many items in this sector are purchased impulsively, often driven by hedonic motivations. The study aims to determine the influence of hedonic shopping motivation on online impulse purchase behavior in the fashion industry among Generation Y consumers. Generation Y consumers are tech-savvy customers with high-income potential who engage in online shopping. Following a cross-sectional survey, 400 responses from Generation Y students were collected from North-West University and Vall University of Technology in South Africa and analyzed to address the research objective. The results of the study indicate that Generation Y students found social shopping, value shopping, relaxation shopping and novelty as the strongest motives that influence their fast fashion online impulse buying behavior, while idea shopping, adventure shopping and fun with praise from others do not exhibit a statistically significant influence on this cohort. In terms of importance, relaxation shopping was the most important motive for fast fashion online impulse buying behavior among Generation Y students, followed by social shopping, novelty and value shopping. The present study obtained a coefficient of determination (R-squared) of 0.492, suggesting that roughly 49.2% of the variance in Generation Y students’ online impulse buying behavior to purchase fast fashion can be predicted by relaxation shopping, social shopping, novelty and value shopping.