AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF Brigitte Gaal Cluver for ...

ecause they believed that the items could potentially be useful in the future, should
they lose weight or should the right occasion arise.
Consumers may also choose to store inactive items because of their hedonic
value. In fact, hedonic value may be of greater importance to consumers, as Khan,
Dhar, and Wertenbroch (2005) state that consumers are more likely to forfeit
utilitarian goods over hedonic goods. Hirschman and Holbrook (1982) state that
items which hold hedonic value have the potential to prompt positive emotional
arousal through multisensory experiences, such as “tastes, sounds, scents, tactile
impressions, and visual images” (p. 146) coupled with historic and/or fantasy imagery.
The authors note that clothing consumption is often motivated by a consumers want
for emotional arousal. In fact, Hirschman and LaBarbera (1990) found that their
informants deemed important those objects that provided hedonic, aesthetic, and
escapist experiences. One type of hedonic value associated with clothing is beauty.
It has been suggested that value resides in an object that can provide a consumer
with a desired aesthetic experience (McDowell, 1983). The tactile and visual
elements of a clothing item, such as “line, space, shape, form, light, color, texture,
and patterns,” may come together in a gestalt-like form (Wagner, 1999, p. 138) and
create a “stimulating, rewarding, and pleasurable” experience for the individual
perceiving the item (Fiore et al., 1996). Even after a clothing item is no longer a part
of an individual’s active inventory, an individual’s inability to let go of an item which
holds such hedonic value may manifest in the individual’s attachment to the item.
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