Preliminary Study on the Metrosexual Stereotype

Abstract

Metropolitan young males have shown great interests on fashion, cosmetic products, personal care and spend good money on appearance in recent years. This paper intends to know (1) the metrosexual consumer characteristics that could affect their intentional or unintentional behavior as a consumer, to (2) explore metrosexual consumers’ leisure symbolic consumption, and to (3) find out the Taiwan metrosexual icon based on their lifestyle, preferences in reading different magazines or books related to fashion, their expenditures and other elements). Males above 18 in Southern Taiwan participated in this research. Quantitative method was employed to acquire data and descriptive analysis helped to analyze the result. The results of this study showed that the males in Taiwan are prudential and authentic consumers. They cared about their appearance and would spent quite amount of time in taking care of their body and face. The metro people could be regarded as more authentic consumption driven than superficially-valued. Thus, the new phrase for the Taiwan metrosexual icon can be denominated as “Authentic Fashion Doer.”

Keywords: Metrosexual, Taiwan, Leisure Symbolic Consumption