The effects of self-monitoring tendency on young adult consumers' mobile dependency

Retailing industry has evolved drastically, especially in the past two decades due to the mobile technology. A recent empirical research study proved that the public use of mobile devices can be explained by the extension of the self, Hahn and Kim (2013) suggesting that fashion and appearance related constructs are imperative to understand young adult consumers' mobile use intentions. With an aim to better understand the consumer's mobile usage behavior, the researchers adopted psychographic characteristics such as fashion involvement, self-monitoring tendency, and proclivity of experimenting with appearance to gauge the individual consumers' mobile dependency. Using an online and paper survey, we collected 273 usable responses from college-aged consumers. T-tests revealed that individuals, who had a higher degree of one's sensitivity of self-monitoring, exhibited a significantly higher mean scores in fashion involvement, experimenting with appearance, and mobile dependency. A similar pattern was found among the ones with higher degree of ability of self-monitoring tendency as well. Discussion and pragmatic implications to the retail industry are provided.