Use Value/Exchange Value Conflict and Adjustment Strategies among Millennial and Generation Z Consumers in Fashion Resale Markets : A Grounded Theory Approach

This study explores how Millennial and Generation Z (MZ) consumers experience and manage conflicts between use value and exchange value in fashion resale markets. While prior research has primarily conceptualized resale consumption as rational or strategic decision-making focused on price efficiency and resale potential, this study adopts a grounded theory approach to examine consumers’ lived experiences after purchase. Based on in-depth interviews, the findings reveal that value conflict emerges from the interaction of digital resale platforms, scarcity-driven fashion markets, and accelerated trend diffusion through social media and online communities. Consumers simultaneously perceive fashion items as objects of use and assets for potential resale, leading to sustained psychological tension beyond the purchase stage. In response, consumers employ various conflict adjustment strategies such as postponing use or sale, conditionally controlling usage, and actively utilizing platform and community-based information. These adjustment processes result in diverse consumption outcomes, including satisfaction or dissatisfaction depending on resale performance, experiential satisfaction through use, and boundary consumption states in which items remain neither fully consumed nor exchanged. Importantly, repeated conflict adjustment experiences contribute to the gradual cultivation of personal taste, as consumers refine their preferences, evaluation criteria, and decision-making standards over time. This study contributes to the literature by conceptualizing fashion resale consumption as a processual experience of value conflict adjustment and taste development rather than a single outcome-oriented decision.