Factors Influencing Malaysian Youth’s Intention to Purchase Fast Fashion Products

This study discovers the consumer behaviour of Malaysian youth towards fast fashion to understand factors that influence their purchase intention. The significance of this study is it contributes quantitatively to the field of fast fashion and consumer behaviour in Malaysia, which is limited as of this study. Past studies in the field have shown consumers of various countries and culture behave differently towards fast fashion. Five factors (brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing) have been identified from past literatures on fast fashion to be integrated with the main components of TPB to find out which factor is the best predictor of Malaysian youth’s purchase intention. A total of 384 respondents had participated in the online survey containing instruments adapted from multiple studies. The study’s findings revealed that trendiness of product has the strongest influence on youth’s purchase intention


Introduction
In the recent decades, prominent fast fashion brands such as Mango, H&M, Forever 21, Zara, Gap, and Uniqlo have established themselves as the global, go-to places to shop for an extensive range of apparels, from daily wear to party wear to work attire (Divita & Yoo, 2014).For example, Mango has opened 2,600 stores across 115 countries by 2022 (Mango, 2022).According to H&M Group's 2022 report, their various brands including H&M, Monki, Weekday, and their other flagship stores collectively operate a network of 4,664 retail locations across 77 countries worldwide.With fast fashion retailers expanding so rapidly and successfully on a global level, they are progressively capturing a larger portion of market share from traditional fashion retailers (Sull & Turconi, 2008).
At the same time, the fast fashion sector is experiencing significant growth in Malaysia.During 2022, the fashion industry garnered a combined revenue of US$ 2.73 billion (Statistica, 2022), and leading contributors to this segment included recognizable fast fashion names like Shein, Shopee, Zalora, Padini, and H&M (ecommerceDB, 2022).In the context of a small nation in Southeast Asia, the domestic fast fashion label Padini has established a presence of 330 stores both domestically and globally (Padini, 2023).Meanwhile, renowned global fast fashion entities like H&M have solidified their significance by operating 41 outlets in Malaysia (Lajman, 2022).
It is found that cultural and geographical differences reflect the behaviour of consumers towards fast fashion (Joy et al., 2012), and the main demography of fast fashion is youth aged 18-25 years old (Gupta & Gentry, 2018).This explains why many studies on fast fashion industry chose Millennials and Generation Z as their target population, such as in Johansson et al. (2017) and Sorensen & Jorgenson (2019)'s study.This also can be seen in Malaysia where youth aged 18 to 34 made up the main market share in apparel marketing segment (Statistica, 2019), which brings the focus on the interest to conduct this study on Malaysian youth.
Based on the available literature (Koca & Koc, 2016;Hanaysha, 2017;Gupta et al., 2019;Sorenson & Jorgenson, 2019, Victor et al., 2019), the most common factors concerning youth's consumption of fast fashion products are stated as followed: brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing.These factors are studied in this research, as previous literature stated that they influence consumers' purchasing intention regarding fast fashion.

Problem Statement
Up to this point, studies on consumer's intention in fast fashion and their quantitative factors are quite niche and limited.So far, Negm's (2019) quantitative study is the most relevant to the present study.Meanwhile, qualitative factors are abundantly available in the literature (Bray et al., 2010;Joy et al., 2012;Collett et al., 2013;Sorensen & Jorgenson, 2019).
Many studies in the field (Widyarini & Gunawan, 2018;Negm, 2019;Mohd Yunus et al., 2019;Arora & Kishor, 2019) have utilised the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) in explaining the consumer's intention to purchase various products through its main components as the independent variables: attitude towards behaviour, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control.However, they did not investigate specific factors that influence consumers' intention.For example, consumers' perception towards brand's product, shopping experience, brand awareness and brand image are constituted as attitude towards behaviour.Consumers who have high brand awareness may intend to purchase from that brand, but they may not purchase from that brand if they have a negative perception towards the brand's products.Attitude towards behaviour does not address this.Thus, merely studying consumers' intention based on just "attitude towards behaviour" as an umbrella term is vague and too generic.This example shows that dissecting determinants from TPB into more accurate terms are more effective in pinpointing what exactly is affecting consumers' intention.Mohd Yunus et al. ( 2019)'s study is an example of the concern raised by the researcher in this paragraph.In their study, they utilised "attitude" as one of their determinants of purchase intention for halal products.Their usage of "attitude" is vague as consumers' attitude may refer to their perceived halal product's trustworthiness or the halal product's benefits.

Research Questions
Based on the issues discussed in problem statement, this study aims to answer the following research questions: 1. What is Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products?2. How do brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing affect Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products?3. What is the most dominant factor that influences the intention of Malaysian youth in purchasing fast fashion products?

Research Hypotheses
Studies from Joy et al. (2012) and Sorensen and Jorgensen (2019) found that even though consumers have ethical consciousness towards the environment, they believe that it is more important to be trendy than sacrifice their style for the environment by buying sustainable fashion or second-hand clothes.While Fashion Revolution (2018) found that there is a rise of demand for sustainable fashion consumption in the recent years, other studies said otherwise.Consumers seem to tolerate the sustainability issues when it comes to fast fashion (Joy et al., 2012, Sorensen & Jorgensen, 2019).Therefore, it is hypothesised that: H1: Brand sustainability has a significant positive effect on purchase intention H2: Trendiness of product has a significant positive effect on purchase intention Koca and Koc (2016) found that social factor such as conforming with friends, impressing their family and influence of close circle and cultural values have a significant influence on their consumption behaviour.Those are the most dominant reasons that they purchase clothes among other factors.Therefore, it is hypothesised that: H3: Social factor has a significant positive effect on purchase intention Consumers have higher preference for fast fashion products as they are exposed to the retailers frequently online and in local malls.This resulted that fast fashion products are easily available to the consumers whenever they wish to purchase clothes (Sorensen & Jorgensen, 2019).Han et al (2017) also added that since consumers are rarely exposed to alternative fashion when shopping or on the media platform, they are unfamiliar towards other alternatives of fast fashion.Thus, their default clothing of choice is fast fashion.Therefore, it is hypothesised that: H4: Product accessibility has a significant positive effect on purchase intention With the increased spending power of the current youth generation (CEIC Data, 2017), the youth's desire to be fashionable has been enabled with the affordable pricing of fast fashion products.This means that they can obtain more products of latest trends for less money (Sorensen & Jorgensen, 2019).As for average consumers, the affordable pricing of fast fashion products are seen as a way to be as fashionable as luxury brands (Joy et al., 2012).Besides that, sustainable clothing is believed to be more expensive than fast fashion (Henninger et al., 2016).Consumer's perception of it as a luxury product has cause the avoidance of sustainable fashion and thus their default choice of fast fashion.Therefore, it is hypothesised that: H5: Affordable pricing has a significant positive effect on purchase intention

Theoretical Framework Theory of planned behaviour (TPB)
Theory of planned behaviour (TPB) is a theory that is used to link an individual's beliefs and behaviour.It is an improved version of theory of reasoned action in terms of predictive power (Ajzen, 1991).TPB has been used in application of studies involving the relations among attitude, beliefs, behavioural intentions and behaviour across various fields such as advertising, sustainability and healthcare.Developed by Icek Ajzen, TPB consists of three main components: attitude towards behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control.These main components shape an individual's behavioural intention and behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).TPB is commonly used by researchers to determine the correlation and relationship of factors to the intention of the respondents to purchase various products.Therefore, TPB will be used as the model to investigate the independent variables in relation to the dependent variable of this study.

Integration of External Factors with Theory of Planned Behaviour
Several studies in the past have seen to integrate their selected external factors with the main components of TPB.The rarity of studies using this application in various fields of study reflects that it is either uncommon or still relatively new.Rui et al. (2020) and Luthfia and Rosara (2020) employed this application in their study by incorporating their selected external factors into the appropriate component of TPB.While Luthfia and Rosara (2020)'s research lacks the extensive justification of the integration between external factors and TPB components, Rui et al (2020) have given comprehensive justification on why their selected factors are considered as the components of TPB.They deconstructed each factor according to its definition, purpose and characteristics and compared these constructs to the constructs of TPB components.For instance, they explained that environmental concern as an external factor plays a role in affecting consumers' attitudes towards package-free shopping.Meanwhile, consumers who are concerned about environment form positive attitude towards package-free shopping.Therefore in theoretical perspective, environmental concern is attitude towards behaviour as both of them share the same construct that lead to intention of behaviour.In the same vein, this study replaces the main components (attitude towards behaviour, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control) of TPB model with external variables to study behavioural intentions.
Firstly, attitude towards behaviour evaluates an individual's beliefs towards a subject in question, meaning certain belief causes a particular behaviour to have an effect on an intended outcome (Ajzen, 1991).In the context of this study, external factors, namely brand sustainability and trendiness of product, function as the "attitude towards behaviour" to predict purchase intention (Joy et al., 2012;Sorensen & Jorgensen, 2019).
Brand sustainability here identifies consumers' perception towards green products and sustainable practices of apparel companies.For example, European consumers had unfavourable beliefs towards fast fashion brands and products due to the issue of sustainability, so they were more inclined to purchase eco-fashion products (Joy et al., 2012).
Besides, trendiness of product is a prominent factor which evaluates consumers' perception towards the products' efficacy in appearing modern and fashionable (Joy et al., 2012;Sorensen & Jorgensen, 2019).To sum, brand sustainability and trendiness of product as the external factors are considered the determinants of "attitude towards behaviour" to predict intention.
Secondly, subjective norm measures individuals' perceived perception in performing certain behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).Koca and Koc (2016) studied the effect of social factor as their external factor in purchasing behaviour by measuring their respondents' reasons for buying clothes, and found that "requirement for working environment", conforming with friends" and "family or spouse's desire for difference" were statistically significant in motivating them to purchase clothes.They were hugely influenced by their working environment and the group that they belong to, or wish to belong to.Aside from the need to impress or conform, Kotler and Armstrong (2018) added that personal words and recommendations by family or trusted friends have a strong influence on their behaviour.Therefore, subjective norm is considered as social factor and vice versa as they both are the same as a determinant of intention (Ajzen, 1991).
Lastly, perceived behavioural control measures individuals' perceived control over the behaviour.Perceiving that they have great control over the behaviour, it will lead to them having higher inclination to perform the behaviour (Ajzen, 1991).
In this study, product accessibility (Sorensen and Jorgensen, 2019) and affordable pricing (Joy et al, 2012;Collett et al., 2013;Joshi & Rahman, 2017;Sorensen and Jorgensen, 2019) are the "perceived behavioural control" of the consumers.When a product's accessibility is high, the opportunity is high and impediment is low in obtaining the product through various platforms.Besides, an affordable price means the consumer has the financial resource to obtain the product with little to no obstacle.

Proposed Research Framework
To achieve the research objectives in this study, this study has applied the independent variables (brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing) and dependent variable (purchase intention of fast fashion products) in the model of TPB.As it has been justified in the previous subtopic (Integration of External Factors with Theory of Planned Behaviour), the independent variables are applied appropriately based on their constructs and theory of TPB.The figure below shows the proposed framework for this study.

Methodology Research Design, Sampling, Instrumentation
The present study utilises the quantitative approach that consists of descriptive design to find out respondents' demography and fast fashion consumption habits, as well as causal design to answer the research questions, which are respondents' purchase intention and their perspective towards selected factors that influence their consumption behaviour towards fast fashion.
This research takes place within the Klang Valley region in Malaysia, which its high density of population and concentrated number of fast fashion stores are situated; thus making Klang Valley the most situation location to conduct the study on.384 respondents within the age of 15 to 29 years old are randomly chosen using simple random sampling to answer an online questionnaire.The sampling size is based on Krejcie and Morgan (1970)'s sample size table as a feasible alternative to represent the youth demography in Malaysia.
To match the context of this study, models and items from different sources will be changed and combined to develop this questionnaire.Questionnaire models and items from Koca and Koc (2016), Widyarini and Gunawan (2018) and Arora and Kishor (2019) are adapted to construct the questionnaire of this study.

Data Analysis
The data collected are measured using ordinal, nominal and interval scales with regards to respondents' demography and consumption behaviour for Section I and II to be analysed under descriptive analysis, while data under Section III and IV are measured using interval scale to be analysed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression through IBM SPSS software.
The questionnaire has been verified by two appointed experts in the field of consumer science to establish its content validity.Besides, seven-point bipolar adjective scales were utilised for its construct validity because they are the most optimal measurement to assess each of the constructs of Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) (Aizen, 1991).

Pre-test and Preliminary Data Analysis
Before the data collection was conducted, a pilot test was conducted on 20 respondents, which the reliability analysis has shown to fall within the Acceptable range under Cronbach's alpha's value.To further improve the score, an item was removed from each of the main variables.1 has shown that most of the instruments' Cronbach's alpha values are within the acceptable level, which is from 0.71 to 1.00.However, brand sustainability's reliability score falls within the lesser favourable range which is at 0.610 to 0.70 value.To improve the reliability of the overall instruments, an item has been removed from each variable's construct.Table 2 shows the final reliability score of the instruments after deleting items with low Cronbach's alpha value.(Mishra et al., 2019).To evaluate the normality of the data distribution, Skewness and Kurtosis of the variables involved in this study were examined.As for other method of tests, such as Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro Wilk, they cannot be used as they are deemed unsuitable for sample size larger than 300 (Kim, 2012).
Skewness and Kurtosis of the variables for the sample size of >300, an absolute Skewness value ≤2 or an absolute Kurtosis (excess) ≤4 is defined as normal data (Hair et al., 2010;Mishra et al., 2019).On a side note, it is advised that histograms and absolute values of Skewness and Kurtosis to be reported for any sample sizes more than 300, instead of z-values (Kim, 2013).
Referring to the criteria above by Hair et al. (2010) and Mishra et al. (2019), it can be seen that all of the variables fall within the range of Skewness (±2) and Kurtosis (±4).Therefore, the study is considered normal with regard to the Skewness.

Socio-demographics of Respondents
A total of 384 Malaysian respondents from 15 to 29 years old in Klang Valley participated in the survey.Females made up the majority of the respondents (75%) and most of the respondents are within the range of 20 to 24 years old (66.1%), while 15 to 19 years old (4.7%) is the minority group.The mean of the overall age groups is 2.24 with the standard deviation of 0.529.
As for highest level of education attained, Bachelor's degree holders are the highest (60%), followed by Diploma/Foundation/A-Level holders (24%).Very few of them have a PhD degree (1%).A majority of the youth are still studying full-time (69%), while the rests are working full-time (17%), studying while working part-time (17%), unemployed (4%) and working part-time (2%).
Most of them are currently relying on their parents or family members financially (42%).Meanwhile, 24% of them rely on salary as their main income source.18% of them are depending on scholarship funds and 14% of the youth's main source of income is loan.More than half of the respondents' income range are RM999 and below (58%).25% of them are earning from RM1,000 to RM2,999 and followed up with RM3,000 to RM4,999 (10%).Only a few of them earn RM5,000 to RM6,999 (4%) and RM7,000 and above (3%).

Fast Fashion Consumption Habits
Section II of the questionnaire covers the consumption habits of Malaysian youth towards fast fashion products.This section consists of questions regarding their frequency of purchase, changing wardrobe and buying from retail or online.Using descriptive analysis, this part provides an insight to their general behaviour when it comes to consuming fast fashion products, as well as providing context to further discuss their intention and perceptions for subsequent subtopics to answer RQ1 (What is Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products?),RQ2 (How do brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing affect Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products?)and RQ3 (What is the most dominant factor that influences the intention of Malaysian youth in purchasing fast fashion products?).
It is a common occurrence that Malaysian youth in this study buy clothes from fast fashion brands several times a year (66.70%), while not many of them purchase at least once a year (18%) or on a monthly basis (14.60%).Only a small sum of the youth shop every week (0.80%), as shown in Table 3.
When it comes to shopping for fast fashion products, retail/shopping mall is the main preference for respondents.Most of the respondents shop in retail and online several times a year, but they tend to shop in retail (62.80%) more often than online shopping (58.10%).They also prefer to shop in retail regardless of monthly basis (13.30%) or annually (15.60%), over online shopping, at 11.50% and 13.30% respectively.Furthermore, the number of respondents who don't shop online (16.40%) is higher than retail (7.60%).
Majority of the respondents update their wardrobe either several times a year (36.50%) or every few years (36.50%), while others discard their unwanted clothes once a year (23.20%), some every month (3.60%) and only a minority do it every week (0.30%).This data shows that the habits of consuming and discarding fast fashion products among Malaysian youth are similar to youths in other countries, as reported in the past studies in the industry.Gupta et al., 2019).Comparing this data to studies as early as Allwood et al.'s study in 2006, consumers in the United Kingdom on average threw away 30 kilograms of clothings.Morgan and Birtwistle (2009)'s study continues to observe the instances of consumers' increased behaviour of buying clothes while decreased frequency in wearing the clothes before discarding them.As result, the weight of apparel waste has increased from 7% to 30% within the period of five years.In the recent years, Bick et al. (2018)'s finding reported that in United States alone, American consumers dispose 85% of clothing they consumed, amounting to 1.7 billion kilograms every year.On average, every American throws away almost 36 kilograms of clothes annually.The observation of this global trend deduces that this is a behaviour commonly shared by consumers of fast fashion products.

Inclination to Consume Fast Fashion Products
The findings of the descriptive data analysis for RQ1 show that the respondents generally are inclined to shop from fast fashion brands.In terms of temporal tendencies, they intend to purchase new clothes from fast fashion brands in short period of time, which is within the year.They are also inclined to buy in the future, which is in the year to come.Overall, the respondents' intention to purchase from fast fashion brands is positive.Their intention is consistent with expenditure trend reported by CEIC Data (2017), which Malaysian youth of their age group were among the top spenders of fast fashion industry.

Relationship between Purchase Intention and Selected Factors
A Pearson correlation coefficient was computed to assess the linear relationship between the five variables and purchase intention.Overall, there was a positive correlation between the five variables and purchase intention.All of the variables (brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing) are also found to have significant relationship at p = 0.000 with the dependant variable.Among the five independent variables, trendiness of product is found to have the strongest relationship in accordance to Cohen (1988)'s interpretation, with r = 0.597, p = 0.000.This signifies that trendiness of product is the most dominant factor that influences Malaysian youth's purchase intention.As for the hypotheses testing of this study, each independent variable is has a significant relationship with the dependant variable.This confirms each of the hypotheses formulated: H1: Brand sustainability has a significant positive effect on purchase intention H2: Trendiness of product has a significant positive effect on purchase intention H3: Social factor has a significant positive effect on purchase intention H4: Product accessibility has a significant positive effect on purchase intention H5: Affordable pricing has a significant positive effect on purchase intention Since p = 0.000 ≤ α = 0.1, each of the null hypothesis is rejected.There is a significant positive relationship between brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility, affordable pricing and purchase intention at 0.01 level of significance.Trendiness of product has also proven to be the most dominant factor in influencing purchase intention.
While all five factors have a significant relationship with purchase intention, trendiness of product stands out among others in terms of the strength of correlation (r = 0.597, p = 0.000).Trendiness of product is the most valued aspect of fast fashion and thus, it has the strongest relation to respondents' purchase intention.It is apparent in the past studies by Joy et al. (2012), Johansson et al. (2017), Negm (2019) and Sorensen and Jorgensen (2019), where the youths placed a lot on importance in the trendy aspect when it comes to fashion.Their main criteria to purchase from fast fashion brands is that the clothes need to be modern and stylish, while other factors come second and so forth.

Five Selected Factors' Effect on Purchase Intention
This section examines the effect and strength of brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing on Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products.This section examines the effect and strength of brand sustainability, trendiness of product, social factor, product accessibility and affordable pricing on Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products.Results for RQ2 unveil the capability of external factors being the predictors of intention.The integration of external factors with main components of TPB as a model has shown to be able to predict consumers' intention.As a model, the factors have a positive significant relationship with purchase intention.Amongst the degree of effect between the five factors with purchase intention, trendiness of product is the most influential factor in determining the youths' intention to purchase fast fashion products.This objective also discovered that these external factors are suitable predictors of intention.The findings has replicated Negm (2019)'s study, which external factors are used as predictors of behavioural intention in TPB model.Aside from its efficacy as a model, affordable pricing and social factor as the least dominant factors in this study can mean that Malaysian youth's occupation, source of income and monthly salary affect their priorities towards fast fashion products.Price and the need to conform or impress are not as important to them as compared to trendy aspect of clothes.

Conclusion
This study aims to find out Malaysian youth's intention to purchase fast fashion products and examine the selected factors from the literature on their effect on purchase intention.The findings of this study reveal that trendiness of product affects Malaysian youth' purchase intention most significantly.Meanwhile, product's affordability and social factor do not matter much to them when it comes to shopping from fast fashion brands.In terms of using the factors to predict intention with TPB, the output value has shown that variables integration with components of TPB is viable and this is able to help to pinpoint which variable exactly affects consumers' intention accurately.
The study discovered that Malaysian youth consumes fast fashion products just as much as consumers of different countries, in terms of purchase and disposal frequency.They are also generally inclined to buy fast fashion products, and shop for clothes at least several times a year as well as change their wardrobe several times a year.The findings can provide cultural and geographical contributions to fast fashion.For instance, this study discovered Malaysian youth tend to value trendiness of product the most while pricing is most valued by consumers in United States, United Kingdom, India and Sweden (Boulstridge & Carrigen, 2000;Bray et al., 2010;Collett et al., 2013;Joshi & Rahman;2017).
The findings have also helped to provide better understanding on the Malaysian Millennial and Gen-Z's consumer behaviour and their values when it comes to consumption.For example, they look for visual quality of clothes when shopping for apparels, while consumers in other countries shop for clothes that are affordable (Boulstridge & Carrigen, 2000;Bray et al., 2010;Collett et al., 2013;Joshi & Rahman;2017).
The results and analysis of this study will be able to contribute to the field of study, including demographics profiling and provide understanding to the behaviour of Malaysian youth towards fast fashion.The study is able to further contribute to utility of TPB through unconventional usage of prediction, specifically by the integration of variables with TPB's main components.
Based on the scope and outcome of this study, there are several recommendations for future studies to enrich the literature of fast fashion industry, such as extending the study to bigger, and more diverse demographics in Malaysia.As this study has discovered that Malaysian youth in Klang Valley generally valued sustainability and believed that fast fashion brands are sustainable, a qualitative study can be conducted to identify their opinions and inclination towards alternate fashion.The study can help to identify any possible advantages and shortcomings of both fast fashion and alternate fashion in order to benefit the industry in the future.

Table 1
Reliability analysis of instruments in pre-test George and Mallery's (2003)s (2003)interpretation, Table

Table 2
Reliability analysis of instruments after removal of items

Table 3
Frequency of habits when shopping for fast fashion products among respondents

Table 4
Descriptive statistics for respondents' inclination to purchase fast fashion products

Table 5
Pearson correlation coefficient between selected factors and purchase intention

Table 6
Multiple regression output of the selected factors with regards to purchase intention