Subjective Age Trends and Fashionable Clothes Involvement

Age is a socio-demographic variable widely used in marketing. However, the use of this criterion sometimes reveals surprising and unexpected aspects noticeably the consumption of children’s products and services by adults and the use of articles for youth by very old people. Therefore, a new concept has been developed in order to overcome the limitations of the chronological age. It is called the subjective age. This norm refers to the age that the person attributes to himself: He may perceive himself younger or older than his actual age. As a component of the “self-concept”, subjective age influences consumers’ behavior and hence their involvement with clothes. Often presented as a "value of youth", dress fashion can reflect the perception of the person to himself and thus explain the subjective age trends. This work has shown that the subjective age trend can influence people’s involvement to dress fashion: the more individuals are involved, the more they will tend to rejuvenate and to age/grow old.


Introduction
Age is a very important criterion because of its relevance in market segmentation and targeting.The age's structure has changed and a new ambiguous concept was born, it is subjective age.It reveals the age that the person gives to himself; the person can see himself younger or older than the reality.This perception has an impact on the consumer behaviour.
The main objective of this framework is to analyze the effect of subjective age on consumer's behaviour, notably, on fashion clothes involvement.Specifically, this research seeks to answer the following question: What's the subjective age impact on fashionable clothes involvement?

Subjective Age Concept
Sociodemographic variables have a strong impact on marketing research.They give us an idea about the consumer profile, segment and define the target that the company seeks.
Age is one of the most demographic variables adopted which has an objective aspect (chronological age) and a subjective aspect (subjective age).Indeed, the subjective age overcomes the limitations of the actual age (which is presented by date of birth).(Denis Guiot, 2001).

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Only use of the Chronological age can't segment a market, Bone (1991) confirmed this result in thirty-three empirical studies.Neugarten (1979) developed the model of "life events".Some of those events are: Beginning a working life or when the children leave the home, birth of grandchildren, retired and the spouse's death.Those events let person feel the gap between them subjective and real age.
Several disciplines have studied "subjective age", we can raise; gerontology, psychology, human development, anthropology and marketing.This variety of disciplines explains the emergence of several measures of subjective age.The primary problem encountered studies of subjective age was to find ways to measure the concept (Guiot D, 2001).Thus, the subjective age was measured in different ways: - Blau (1956) and Geroge Mutan (1982) have shown that subjective age is the identity age, but this measure was not reliable or valid.
This measure is easy to understand and adopt, but it is not appropriate for complex phenomena.
- Kastenbaum (1972) developed the measure of perceived age that Barak and Schiffman (1981) have subsequently changed using items expressed in decades.Kastenbaum and al have introduced the subjective age dimension of age in the psychology of human development trends resulting on the adjustment to aging and consciousness of aging.Barak and Schiffman (1981) have changed the format of items in the scale of age.These are expressed in decades and are codified in the average of these (55 years, 65 + ...).Then a score of cognitive age was established by averaging the four items.This allows a more accurate assessment of subjective age.Indeed, "the authors designated by perceived age, a person who believes it has the merits of itself," and assessed in terms of four ages "ages of self" expressed in years; felt age (feel age), the age that is attributed to his physical appearance (look age), the age which shows through his actions (do age) and age that corresponds to their interests (interst age).
Individuals are invited to see the decades (20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90)  The subjective age is also manifested through its trends which are; rejuvenation trend (individual feels younger than reality) and aging trend (individual feels older than the real).
This trend is calculated through a differential by subtracting the perceived age of the real one, using the following formula: Chronological age -Perceived age

Chronological Age or Subjective Age?
Chronological age is the age calculated from the date of birth.The authors have always considered it the "most explanatory variable in researches in consumer behavior" (Filser 1993).

Journal of Marketing Research & Case Studies
Previous studies established significant relationships between objective age or subjective age on hand and the other behavioral variables: • Joelle Gouteron (2004) showed that the correlations are similar, they are in the same direction, with a slight difference in intensity: They are stronger for subjective age.
• Denis Guiot (2001) showed that the theory of subjective age has not been a "rigorous refutation" in terms of "predictive superiority" of this variable on chronological age.
• Nancy Stephens (1991) compare the actual age of the respondents owners of certain goods and services and the subjective age.She finds that: -Respondents who tend to get younger are more likely to have a car, a holiday home and a suitable house for them.
-Respondents who tend to look older are more likely to have a burial plot.
-Respondents who have a young workforce, have own more cars, vacation home and a suitable house for them.
-Old respondents look to buy burial plots and writing wills.
In a study about trends'effect (aging and rejuvenation 'effect), Denis

Concept Definition
Fashion clothes involvement is defined as "a general interest in fashion and awareness of changes in fashion apparel."Douglas J. Tig ert, Lawrence J Ring and Charles W. King (1976) 'Cass (2000'Cass ( , 2004) ) has shown that involvement in fashion dress depends on the characteristics of the person (especially for women and youths).It depends too on the knowledge on fashionable clothes.
Park, Kim and Forney (2006) define it as "The degree of interest in a product category (the product is the clothes)."Kaiser (1997), see that fashion involvement has another conceptualization.
It shows individual degree of interest in fashionable clothes and how much they give it importance.

Researches
on involvement in fashion clothing based their study on "fashion innovators" and the "leaders' opinion of fashion."Summers (1970) showed that Both of those variable has an important role in the adoption of fashionable dress.

These authors
show that involvement with fashion dress consists on the interest and fun having in wearing fashion clothing.It reveals also the perceived risk regarding the wearing of such clothing.

Subjective Age and Involvement to Fashion Dress
Previous studies have shown that the "subjective age" influences several behavioral variables: like the innovativeness, persuasion and advertising involvement with clothing fashions.
The authors have shown a relationship between subjective age and innovativeness.It seems that the subjective age influences the tendency to buy and influence the purchase itself.Indeed, the more we see young, the more we tend to accept the new, we deal with novelty, seek for novelty, try something new.Indeed, individuals who tend to rejuvenate themselves seem to consume more new products and services.(Barak and Gould, 1985).Individuals likely to try new products are young people (Gatignon and Robertson, 1985).People tend to get older does not acquire new product, seek less information, are moving away from anything that is unfamiliar to them, they expect that others try out the product to consume it then .(Stephens, 1991).
Similarly, studies have shown that there is congruence between the subjective age of the consumer and the perceived age of models.This relationship affects the responses of the audience (Chingching Chang, 2008).The superposition of two ages "is a source of contradictory tendencies: it removes as much as it attracts the target" (Radu M, 2006).The attraction appears when audience feel being close to the advertising model.But, people doubt about the credibility of advertisers and do not think they one day will look like to advertising models.They will not adopt subsequently the product.The most persuasive advertising is that which is most appropriate at the hearing.
Fashion dress «is changing the present to the future and returns it to the past" (Denis Guiot, 2001).Thus, a senior following fashion dress can keep his image of 'young person' turning 'backwards' through his clothes, while a young person can projected himself into the future and grow through his coat.The orientation of the subjective age determines when the involvement with clothing fashions.Fashion dress is often "the values of youth."Communicated through fashionable clothes let seniors identify themselves with a younger age (Mc Cracken, 1988).To be involved in fashion allows senior to defend themselves, protect their social image, self esteem, their social roles and "their integration in society.""This trend is reinforced by societal orientation of appearing younger in the mode changes."(Behling,1985).
The effect of subjective age on involvement in fashion dress has been studied by Denis Guiot (2001and 2006), Wilkes (1992) and Barak (1998).
For adolescents (e): During a stage of transformation of body, adolescents change their behaviour, they no longer wear the clothes of children and adopt those of adults.They give more importance to them appearance and them identity."This is very special to those who want to say socially" (Montepare and Lachman, 1989).The involvement in fashion dress allows him to "demonstrate his autonomy face to his family and identify his place in a membership group, to find his bearings in the discursive systems of fashion experts and demonstrate its comprehensive program of life."This is the aging trend.
When the person refuses the idea that aging stage is part of life and she wants to keep her image when she feels more comfortable wearing clothes that are more compatible with their subjective age.The latter tries to balance by correcting the effects of time on her appearance and hiding them in tissue, symbols etc. and adopting the required mode.Indeed, it is better than reacting to undergo pain and endless suffering of creating a complex in advanced age.The main motivation for involvement with fashion dress is 'be yourself', have a congruence between subjective age and his physical appearance and rejuvenate (for senior) or age (for teenagers).
The individual may be disoriented between two age groups: Her outfits mention a state and a different age from what he feels to have.Torn between his old style of dress and his state of mind, it is forced and opts to fashion dress to recreate.A person with a tendency to rejuvenate would do little in clothing for elderly person.She then resorts to fashion dress sign of youth continues to be a balance between his subjective view of herself and her advanced age.
Research has shown that women are more involved than men in fashion clothing, they are better informed and more aware.This may be due to late onset of signs of aging in men (Guiot, 2001).(Moderating effects of sex) We conclude that the subjective age predicts the involvement with fashionable clothes.The rejuvenating trend predicts the behavior of 'seniors' to involvement in fashion clothing the aging trend predicts the behavior of 'young subjects' to fashion dress.

Remark
The importance of fashion clothing in the eyes of senior classes in advanced age appears to decrease with the actual age, and for two reasons: the first is that there is less contact (stop work and the weakening of health status) and therefore decrease the "social use of clothes."The second reason is the degradation of fashion perceived "as being less appropriate in individuals aware of an advanced age." (Denis Guiot, 2001).
Being the age that the individual thinks he, is a subjective age among the variables that construct the image that the individual has of himself.This relationship determines the existence of a harmony between the age that the consumer sees and consumption of fashion clothing.
The subjective age is a very important variable that predicts well the consumer behavior that manifests itself through its aspirations are: the tendency to get younger and tend to grow old.Indeed, previous studies have focused on studying the facets "cognitive age" and "ideal age" to determine and identify the subjective age and then check their impact on behavioral variables.Our research excluded the facet ideal which is the desired age (the age that an individual would have at all) and is more interested in the perceived age in a given time and well-defined and this, to have results more relevant and in fact an existing unwanted or absolute.These four facets are extracted from the work of Barak and Schiffman (1981) that changed the work Kastenbaum and Ali (1972).They represent an assessment to the variable "subjective age".This is the measure most used in marketing.To study trends of subjective age one must first identify the subjective age and compared with chronological age.If chronological age is greater than the subjective age, there would be a rejuvenating trend.An aging trend will occur otherwise.
In the same vein of previous research, this research will verify the existence and explain the links between other aspects of subjective age (age felt, physical age, age acts age and interests) on the one hand and involvement with the fashion dress and the other will go further to explain the benefit, enjoyment and perceived risk regarding the wearing of such clothing.
Our study operates within this framework and aims to study the relationship between trends in subjective age and particularly the involvement with clothing fashions in a Tunisian.The choice of Tunisia from the fact that no country Maghrébien to our knowledge has been the subject of previous studies, previous studies were all focused on America, Europe and Asia.Thus, this study fills this gap.Previous work has shown the existence of relationship between age and subjective involvement with clothing fashions.However, the relationship between subjective age and trends of the different facets of involvement with the arts and fashion, have not been verified to our knowledge.Assumptions that derive from our problem as well as previous research on this theme are: • H1: The tendency of the subjective age would negatively on the interest and pleasure to be involved in fashion clothing.
• H2: The tendency of the subjective age would negatively on the perceived risk of getting involved to dress fashion.
The conceptual model and the different hypotheses of the research are illustrated in Figure 1.

Study Methodology
The Measurement of the concept of subjective age (the tendency of subjective age).
The scale of Kastenbaum et al (1972) which was amended by Barak and Schiffman (1981) is the only valid and reliable scale in the literature: -At the bottom of myself The subjective age is the average of these four ages.The trend of subjective age is the differential (chronological age, subjective age).Barak and Gould (1985) based on the work of Barak and Schiffman (1981).The choice of the selected scale is justified by a test of all scales of each variable and checking Cronbach's α for each scale.

Measure of Involvement with Fashion Dress
Among the various proposed scales (see Appendix), we choose the scale of Laurent and Kapferer (1986) adapted by Kim (2005), Michaelidou and Dibb (2006) and Poiron (1997).The choice of this scale is back to its good psychometric properties.This scale was chosen after pre-tested the scales measuring involvement with clothing fashions in Tunisia.
It consists of 11 items for which individuals must indicate their level of agreement on a Likert scale with 7 levels: not at all agree, to disagree, slightly disagree, neutral, slightly to agree, somewhat agree, strongly agree

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-One can say that I'm interested in fashion clothing.
-I enjoy wearing a fashion garment.
-Wear a fashion that is pleasing.
-The garment that I wear expresses a little of what is.
-The clothing I wear reflects what kind of person I am.
-It's very annoying to buy clothes that are inappropriate.
-I buy a garment that pleases me more that bothers me.
-When you buy a fashion garment one is never sure of his choice.
-When you buy a fashion garment, you never know very well that if he had to take.
-I'm still a little disoriented when I choose a fashion garment.
-Choose a fashion garment is quite difficult

Study
Our research follows a quantitative approach.A self-administered questionnaire was therefore developed to gather the necessary information because it adapts well to the sample.The sampling method we adopted is the convenience sampling.
The sample consists of 153 Individuals including 76 women and 77 men.Our sample selection is justified in our theoretical part in which it was shown that young people tend to be old, as adults and seniors, they will tend to rejuvenate.Our sample should contain individuals of different age groups and persons of Tunisian nationality because our empirical part operates in a Tunisian context.

Purification of Measurement Scales The Scale of Involvement with Fashion Dress
To study the unidimensionality of the scale is applied CPA.The results are as follows: We conducted a study for each factor dimensionality and reliability.
Of these four factors, two were eliminated (factor 3 and factor 4) because they are unreliable.
• Reliability testing of scales Consideration of the scale of interest and pleasure dimension -The index of KMO is 0.641> 0.5.The qualities of representation are above 0.5.

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-This scale is unidimensional.The review shows that this single factor contains 58.958% of the total variance.
This scale is unidimensional and reliable.We can therefore retain as it is.
Consideration of the scale of the symbolic dimension -The KMO index is 0.5 = 0.5.The qualities of representation are above 0.5.
-This scale is unidimensional.The review shows that this single factor contains 67.179% of the total variance.
This scale is one-dimensional but it is unreliable.We cannot therefore hold.The alpha cannot be improved.

Consideration of the scale of the dimension perceived importance
-The KMO index is 0.5 = 0.5.The qualities of representation are above 0.5.
-This scale is unidimensional.The review shows that this single factor contains 66.913% of the total variance.
This scale is one-dimensional but it is unreliable.We cannot therefore hold.The alpha cannot be improved.

Consideration of the scale of subjective probability dimension
-The index of KMO is 0.756> 0.5.The qualities of representation are above 0.5.
-This scale is unidimensional.The review shows that this single factor contains 68.727% of the total variance.
This scale is unidimensional and reliable.We can therefore retain as it is.
⌠ on four factors, only two have been validated.It does not take into account the other two following.

The Scale of Subjective Age
The KMO index of 0.784 is> 0.5.The qualities of representation are above 0.5.This scale is unidimensional.The review shows that this single factor contains 77.262% of the total variance.This scale is unidimensional and reliable.We can therefore retain as it is.

Table 3: The Structure of Subjective Age after Purification
The Study Results

Simple Linear Regression H1:
The subjective age would negatively affect on the interest and fun fashion dress We will study the relationship between subjective age and interest and fun fashion dress.

H1a1: The subjective age would negatively on the interest in fashion clothin
We will study the relationship between subjective age and interest clothing.
The significance = 0.013 <0.05  model is significant, there is a relationship between two variables.This significance is in the negative direction of the relationship (β = -0.204)and therefore the two variables are inversely correlated.R 2 = 0.042 is close to 0. The subjective age in a negative impact on the pleasure felt through the clothes of fashionable clothes.We validate the hypothesis.

H1a3: The subjective age would negatively on the agreeableness of fashionable clothes
We will study the relationship between subjective age and the agreeableness of fashions: The significance = 0.026 <0.05  model is significant, there is a relationship between two variables.This significance is in the negative direction of the relationship (β = -0.184)and therefore the two variables are inversely correlated.R 2 = 0.034 is close to 0. It is low but acceptable  age explains little subjective agreeableness of fashionable clothes.Indeed, the percentage of the variance of the agreeableness of fashions explained by the subjective age is 3.4%.
The subjective age is a negative impact on the agreeableness of fashionable clothes.We validate the hypothesis.
⌠ The subjective age has a negative impact on the interest and fun fashion dress: the more one feels young (it is more subjective with age), the more interest and fun fashion dress.
We can validate this hypothesis.

H2: Subjective age would negatively on the subjective probability
We will study the relationship between subjective age and subjective probability.

H2b1: Age subjective uncertainty would negatively selecting
We will study the relationship between subjective age and the uncertainty of choice.
The significance = 0.656> 0.05  model is not significant, there is no relationship between two variables.
We reject the hypothesis.

H2b2:
The subjective age would negatively 'hesitancy in purchasing" We will study the relationship between subjective age and hesitation in purchasing.
The significance = 0.671> 0.05  model is not significant, there is no relationship between two variables.
We reject the hypothesis.

H2b3: The subjective age would negatively disorientation when choosing
We will study the relationship between subjective age and disorientation when choosing.
The significance = 0.015 <0.05  model is significant, there is a relationship between two variables.This significance is in the negative direction of the relationship (β = -0.201)and therefore the two variables are inversely correlated.R 2 = 0.04 is close to 0. It is low but acceptable  age explains little subjective disorientation when choosing.Indeed, the percentage of variance of disorientation when choosing explained by the subjective age is 4%.
The subjective age has a negative impact on the disorientation when choosing.We validate the hypothesis.

H2b4:
The subjective age would negatively on the complexity of choice We will study the relationship between subjective age and complexity of choices.
The significance = 0.001 <0.05  model is significant, there is a relationship between two variables.This significance is in the negative direction of the relationship (β = -0.260)and therefore the two variables are inversely correlated.R 2 = 0.068 is close to 0. It is low but acceptable  subjective age explains little of the complexity of choices.Indeed, the percentage of variance explained by complexity of the choice of subjective age is 6.8%.
The subjective age has a negative impact on the complexity of choices.We validate the hypothesis.
We can accept this supposition.
⌠ more one feels young (age decreases subjective), the lower the probability of making a mistake in choosing a fashion garment increases.

⌠
The subjective age has a negative impact on involvement with clothing fashions.Indeed, the more you feel young (age decreases subjective), the adoption of more fashionable clothes increases.Thus, the subjective age predicted long involvement with the fashion dress.
The study of interdependencies to validate the hypothesis that the subjective age has a negative impact on involvement with clothing fashions.The two dimensions of involvement with clothing fashions depend on subjective age.

Multiple linear Regression
We will verify that the following four ages of the highest impact on behavioral variable.For this, we used the method of multiple linear regression and we use the method "step" to phase variables by selecting the most explanatory: The results are as follows:

Discussion of Results
In this section we will discuss the results and compare them with results obtained in previous studies.Similarities and differences will be presented.
The results obtained from our sample of 153 individuals show that Tunisians feel younger and therefore have a tendency to rejuvenate.Linear regressions were used to test our hypotheses and, because all variables (explanatory and explain) are quantitative.
The results converge with previous results: The effect of age on the subjective involvement with fashion dress has been studied by Denis Guiot (2001and 2006), Wilkes (1992) and Barak (1998).They confirmed the existence of a relationship between age and subjective involvement with clothing fashions.Denis Guiot (2001) showed that the greater the tendency to get younger, more involvement with the fashion clothing is stronger.Our hypothesis was partially validated.It was confirmed that: the more tendency to rejuvenate, the more interest and pleasure to be involved in fashion clothing.And there tends to be younger, the more likely to make a mistake by adopting the dress fashion (choosing a dress, people feel disoriented.They also find that this choice is complicated).Individuals who are involved to rejuvenate fashion dress for the interest (that is to say, the meaning and importance of fashion clothing) and pleasure (that is to say the capacity of the garment fashion to provide a feeling of pleasure and a pleasant feeling) attached by fashion garment to the wearer).
The subjective age has an effect on consumer behavior.Indeed, previous studies have established significant relationships between subjective age and behavioral variables.In a Tunisian context, this study showed that the majority of Tunisians have a tendency to rejuvenate.This trend has a negative impact on involvement with clothing fashions.

General Conclusion
Throughout this research, we attempted to study the relationship between subjective age and consumer behavior.In particular, we investigated the effect of the tendency of the age on the subjective involvement with clothing fashions.These effects were verified in a mainly European, American and Asian.To our knowledge, no empirical study was interested in the Tunisian context.
Initially, we presented an overview of theoretical and empirical approaches that have analyzed the effect that could have the tendency of the subjective age of consumer behavior, in general, and the involvement with the clothing styles in particular.It appears from these studies that the trend of the subjective age has a significant effect.In a second step, we adopted an analytical approach that allowed the study of the relationship between different behavioral variables from the "involvement with fashion dress" and the variable "subjective tendency of the age".
The results are quite satisfactory and suggest several interpretations.The subjective age as defined by the age that we attribute seems to be a converge to a tendency to rejuvenate in most Tunisians.Indeed, the majority of respondents see younger and gives an age less than the real.Moreover, the subjective age and particularly the rejuvenating trend negatively influences the involvement with clothing fashions.Indeed, the more subjective age decreases, the involvement with the fashion dress up.
These methodological contributions can be used directly by the leaders: -The marketing men can incorporate subjective age in their marketing strategies, market research, segmentation, positioning and design of advertisements.
-The producers of textiles and clothing styles can benefit from the inclusion of subjective age in the process of manufacture.
-Department of Research and Development, may account for this variable the manufacture of new products to satisfy and meet the expectations of consumers.
Like all research, our work is not to hide some limitations: -Age is a subjective criterion very difficult to measure.This is due to its psychological character.Thus, the use of declarative criterion for the measure.
-The sample size: a larger sample, would have given more reliable results.It would be interesting to replicate the study on a larger population.
-The structure of the sample: a convenience sample is not representative of the entire Tunisian population.However, one can not generalize the results.
-The lack of literature review on the subject, which has limited to some very interesting articles and authors.-The absence of fuller analysis such as canonical analysis that could have improved our study.
-In a later, this work can be completed and deepened.Among the avenues of research, we propose: -Develop other relationships between subjective age and other behavioral variables.
-Conduct a study on a given product and compare the different patterns of subjective age to other ages (as the actual age and biological age) the above.
-Establish a comprehensive model there or is connected to its subjective age antecedent variables and consequences.
-Conduct a study that examines the trait moderator of subjective age in a relationship between two variables.

Figure
Figure 1: Conceptual Model

:
The subjective age would negatively on involvement with fashion dress