Exploring Millennial’s Perceptions towards Luxury Fashion Wearable Technology

Purpose – This study aims to examine the relationship between key value propositions of luxury fashion smartwatches, consumer attitudes and their purchase intentions, and to explore Millennial consumers’ overall perceptions of using these wearable technologies.

Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts a mixed methods approach. Quantitative enquiry consisting of 312 respondents was followed by two qualitative focus groups in order to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.

Findings – The findings indicate that functional, individual and social factors influence Millennial consumers’ adoption intention of luxury fashion smartwatches. Empirical results reveal that perceived hedonism and usefulness are the most important factors that motivate adoption intentions, followed by subjective norm and perceived conspicuousness, indicating that luxury smartwatches are perceived as both a technological device and luxury fashion accessory.

Originality/value – Given extant research on luxury fashion smartwatches is limited, this study contributes to this unique research stream by exploring Millennial’s perceptions towards using these new generation smartwatches. This research develops a theoretical framework building on technology adoption model 2 (Venkatesh and Davis, 2000), theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975) and luxury perception models (Wiedmann et al., 2007).