Content Analysis of Consumer Information on On-Line Apparel Retailing Sites for Elderly Consumers

노년층 대상 의류 판매 웹사이트에서 제공하는 소비자 정보에 관한 내용 분석 연구

As baby boomer generations become older, these "New-age elderly" have emerged as an important consumer segment for apparel products. These young-minded elderly have positive attitudes to technology and enjoy many of high technology tool in their everyday life, which signals a huge market potential for internet apparel retailing targeting these elderly consumers. Internet apparel businesses are required to provide various consumer information to its consumers to facilitate the decision making process. For elderly consumers, who might have different shopping behaviors from the younger consumer segments, different kinds of information with higher quality would be required. As a preliminary step to develop internet consumer information model for elderly consumers, this study seeks to investigate the current practice of information offerings of internet apparel businesses for elderly consumers. Ten internet sites carrying apparel products for elderly consumers were selected and analyzed their offerings of consumer information by five researchers. This study found that internet apparel businesses targeting elderly consumers were still small-sized and lack of sophisticated technology to support these elderly consumers. Most web sites provided basic product information and service information but not fashion and trend related information. Managerial implications were discussed.