Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate differences in self-esteem, appearance satisfaction, and clothing benefit pursuit among middle-aged consumer groups according to the gap between their subjective age and real age. For the study, the questionnaire was developed by the author and distributed to male and female consumers in their forties or fifties on september 1~10, 2014. A total of 470 questionnaires was collected and used for the final analysis. Data were analyzed by frequency analysis, reliability analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, ANOVA and Tukey's test, using the SPSS 18.0 Package Program. The findings were summarized as follows. The respondents were clustered in three groups including a group with younger subjective age than real age, a group with same subjective age group to real age, and a group with older subjective age group than real age, The younger subjective age group and same subjective age group showed greater self-esteem and appearance satisfaction than the other group. There were significant differences in four factors of clothing benefit pursuit including pursuit of fashion, pursuit of youth, pursuit of leisure, and pursuit of conformity among these three age groups. The younger subjective age group and same subjective age group showed greater importance on pursuit of fashion, pursuit of youth, and pursuit of leisure, whereas the older subjective age group did on pursuit of conformity.
