Merchandising and Consumer Studies students receive Thesis Awards

Thesis Award recipients Desiree Hazel, and Sergio Bedford, and Aimee Jones

The Thesis Awards have been given to Desiree Hazel, and Sergio Bedford, and Aimee Jones.  Their research focuses on consumers behaviors and attitudes towards fashion and merchandise in numerous aspects.

Desiree Hazel

The Role of Social Media Following in Supporting Corporate Social Responsibility. The purpose of this research is to investigate whether communicating Corporate social responsibility (CSR) through social media increases awareness of the brand’s CSR initiatives for consumers and in turn influences consumer’s perception of transparency, ethicality and Trust which can positively effect purchase intent and E-WOM. This study specifically focuses on brand CSR awareness through social media because there is currently limited research on the consequence on consumers and the brand from utilizing the medium to increase CSR awareness. For CSR to succeed, consumers need to be aware and supportive of initiatives. If there is not any positive response from the consumer for the brand participating in these initiatives, it would not make much business sense for the brand to continue their efforts. This study will make a theoretical contribution by revealing CSR awareness as an important mediator between behavioral outcomes such as brand affect and trust. This study will lend support to previous research that indicate that a company’s CSR activities can impact consumer attitudes and behavior towards a brand and that their CSR activities should be made public.

Sergio Bedford

Shopping on Impulse: Hoarding, Knowledge, and Disposal of Unwanted Fast Fashion Products, I am examining consumers who purchase fast fashion products on impulse, their hoarding behaviors, and disposal of unwanted fast fashion products based on the product quality. I am interested in continuing to develop this research into a scale that can be used to measure consumer calibration of knowledge of sustainable disposal, and how the industry can educate consumers to act sustainably during my doctoral studies.

Aimee Jones

Aimee's research focuses on a qualitative study of young consumers to explore young consumer preferences in acquiring fashion information, understand the hidden motivations/reasons underlying the behavior, and determine the role of digital fashion media, including blogs and other social media outlets, in exerting fashion opinion leadership to fashion information seekers. The results of this research will provide an important and timely contribution to a building rigor on theoretical literature on fashion opinion leadership, as well as fashion information seeking in an ever-changing market. In addition, by providing the understanding of the readers’ behavior and underlying motivations and needs, this study will generate significant practical implications to both traditional media‒fashion magazines and emerging new media‒digital fashion media - utilize this understanding in order to strategically respond to the changes and attract and maintain readership of young consumers.