The impact of identity meaning and voluntary simplicity on second-hand clothing (SHC) consumption from the consumer’s perspective.

Abstract: Shopping for second-hand clothes is a phenomenon that has been on the rise, especially for the last twenty years. Second-hand clothes (SHC) consumption is a consumer-generated shopping trend whose consumers are discursively creating new identity meaning(s) for themselves out of their consumption. It has changed the outlook to become a fashionable trend in the last 20 years and is positively influenced by the emergence of another consumer-generated consumption movement, voluntary simplicity. This thesis takes a keen interest in the identity meaning and voluntary simplicity associated with SHC that are remapping the marketplace discourse about consumption and countervailing overconsumption with pleasurable identity meanings that do not feed on consumerism and craving for new fashion. The thesis aims to investigate these two trends and how they are affecting the marketplace as well as consumer discourse about the meaning of consumption from the consumers’ point of view.