ABSTRACT
While looking at how divergent, interactive and interwoven effects of socio-cultural, economic, habitual and technological factors constitute different levels of empowerment and create different types of ‘prosumers’, our empirical study could go as far as to validate the relevance of different phases of development in the social science of consumption, as what Abbott asserted as the ‘shifting and cyclical nature of social theory’. Echoing both ‘economistic’ and ‘cultural’ turns of consumption theories, fashion consumption is a unique case that not only comprises the material (e.g. a wearable piece of clothing) and immaterial (e.g. the design concept) aspects but also manifests a symbolic layer (e.g. the cyclical notions of ‘fashionability’), supposedly leading the consumer to different sorts of satisfaction. Feeling young or mature, attractive, confident, excited, unique, respected, relaxed and so on can bring psychological gratification.
