A new typology of the social fashion recommerce consumer: profiling segments by motivation and a dual-innovativeness lens

Purpose This study categorizes consumers in social fashion resale marketplaces based on engagement behaviors and investigates four distinct motivational drivers of participation. It also examines fashion innovativeness (FI) and introduces circular fashion innovativeness (CirFI) as a circularity-oriented extension of FI to compare differences across consumer groups. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted with consumers who had experience trading in social fashion resale marketplaces. Consumer engagement behaviors were used for cluster analysis to identify user segments, and subsequent analyses compared differences in motivations, FI and CirFI. Hierarchical logistic regression was further conducted to identify key predictors of highly contributive segments. Data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS. Findings Cluster analysis revealed four consumer segments: circular fashion advocates, with purchase engagement and advocacy; circular fashion networkers, recognition-driven in content consumption and generation; dedicated influencers, highest in all consumer engagement behaviors and FI/CirFI with diverse motivations and detachers, lowest in engagement and innovativeness. Hierarchical logistic regression further showed that recognition, altruism, FI and CirFI-disposal predicted membership in the most contributive segment. Originality/value By segmenting consumers through a multidimensional consumer engagement behavior framework, this study captures the hybrid nature of social fashion resale marketplaces, where social interaction and transactional participation coexist. It further introduces CirFI as a new construct that embeds circularity into innovativeness and complements FI in the circular fashion context. Finally, it identifies Dedicated Influencers as the most contributive segment and demonstrates that recognition, altruism, FI and CirFI-disposal significantly predict membership in this group.