PDF(470 KB)
From Formal Wear to Versatility: The Effect of Consumer Dress Styles in the Marketing of Versatile Products
Yan Yan, Liu Wumei, He Qiong
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2026, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (2) : 401-411.
PDF(470 KB)
PDF(470 KB)
From Formal Wear to Versatility: The Effect of Consumer Dress Styles in the Marketing of Versatile Products
An increasing number of enterprises are adding more functions to their products to compensate for limitations in product design and development. Marketers also often promote products with more functions to consumers as a way to stimulate their purchase intentions. Although multifunctional products are becoming increasingly prevalent in the market, academic research on consumer preferences for such products has largely focused on psychological factors. For example, research has revealed that consumers with impression management motivation, high elaboration level, and maximizers (who strive to make the best choice) prefer multifunctional products. However, no existing studies have explored the impact of visual cues at the consumer level (such as dress style) on the preference for multifunctional products. In offline shopping scenarios, marketers often decide whether to recommend multifunctional products to them based on their dress style, and in daily life, consumers make various consumption decisions while dressed in different styles (e.g., formal vs. informal) every day. Yet, it remains unclear which dress style of consumers would prefer multifunctional products and what the underlying mechanism is. This study proposes that consumers in formal dress (vs. informal dress) would prefer multifunctional rather than single-functional products, with efficiency goals as the mediator, and implicit personality moderates the effect of dress style on the preference for multifunctional products through efficiency goals.
This paper presents four studies that explore how consumers’ dress style (formal vs. casual) influences their preferences for multifunctional products. Study 1 is an offline laboratory experiment with a single-factor between-subjects design of dress style (formal vs. informal), manipulating the dress style of participants to examine the impact of consumers' dress style on their preference for multifunctional cameras/lamps. Study 2 adds a control group and uses a single-factor between-subjects design of dress style (formal vs. informal vs. control group) to replicate the main effect through real advertisements of products (health preservation kettles) and rule out alternative explanations such as self-efficacy and explanatory level. Study 3 investigates the underlying mechanism by which consumers' dress style affects their preference for multifunctional products, specifically efficiency goals. Study 4 employs a 2 (dress style: formal vs. informal) × 2 (implicit personality: incremental theory vs. entity theory) between-subjects design to examine how consumers' implicit personality moderates the effect of dress style on the preference for multifunctional products via efficiency goals.
This article presents consistent evidence from four studies. When consumers dress formally (vs. informally), their preference for multifunctional products increases. This relationship is mediated by efficiency goals and moderated by consumers' implicit personality. The effect is stronger for incrementalists and disappears for entity theorists. The mediating role of efficiency goals in this relationship is further confirmed, as incrementalists activate stronger efficiency goals when dressed formally (vs. informally), leading to a greater preference for multifunctional products. This effect does not occur in entity theorists. Additionally, a supplementary study ruled out the possibility that the observed influence of dress style on multifunctional product preferences is due to the mediating effects of expected income and self-monitoring.
This study has significant theoretical and practical implications. First, previous research has shown that consumers' dress styles can influence their overall purchase intentions and food choices. This study reveals a novel effect of dress style on preference for multifunctional products, thereby advancing our understanding of how dress style shapes consumer decision-making. Second, this study uncovers the importance of dress style in the marketing of multifunctional products, introducing a novel antecedent variable to the literature on consumers' preferences for multifunctional products and broadening the research perspective within this domain. Third, at the mediating level, previous studies have found that compared to informal dress, formal dress activates consumers' clothing-image consistency associations. Building on this, the current study reveals that consumers' formal dress (vs. informal dress) activates efficiency goals, uncovering a new psychological mechanism through which dress styles influence consumer decision-making. Finally, marketers can use consumers' dress styles to make recommendations for multifunctional products.
dress style / multifunctional products / efficiency goals / implicit personality
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