Professional Women's Fashionable Clothing Decisions in Bangkok and New York City

The primary objective of this study is to learn how much of the variances between women's fashionable clothing decisions can be explained by (1) membership of Eastern (collectivistic) and Western (individualistic) cultural groups, (2) membership of three major professional groups, and (3) level of self-esteem. The authors identify five dimensions of women's fashionable clothing decisions: clothing concerns, fashion consciousness, fashion conformity motivation, susceptibility to interpersonal influence, and variety-seeking behavior. A multivariate analysis of covariance is performed on a sample of 233 professional women in Bangkok and 158 in New York City. A multivariate test reveals that cultural group membership contributes the strongest predictive power, followed by self-esteem, and then by the three professional groups. The study concludes with implications concerning cross-cultural fashionable clothing decisions, which will be valuable to both scholars and practitioners in the field. Directions for future research are identified.