Anca Monica Ardeleanu

The article explores the mechanisms that affect consumers’ interest in luxury clothing innovations. The actual research aims to investigate the effect of status quo and clothing involvement on consumer brand loyalty. More, it was intended to quantify the influence of the level of engagement concerning clothing acquisition and the status quo tendency on the consumers’ level of interest toward innovative luxury fashion products. The models were analyzed through the partial-least square-path modeling method. The results revealed that status quo bias and consumers’ involvement in fashion influence their loyalty to brands and level of innovativeness. The novelty of the present research comes from the analysis of the impact of the status quo manifest variables on consumers’ innovative tendencies. Moreover, it was found that status consumption fully mediates the relationships among the investigated predictors and considered outcome variables. The mediator manifests the highest effect size of all investigated predictors. The actual paper advances research in a direction that was not sufficiently addressed in the past, introducing the status quo construct as the main predictor of peoples’ inclination to be loyal to a brand or to manifest a tendency toward innovativeness. Moreover, the article emphasizes the essential role manifested by social status in foreseeing a behavioral response.