A Study on the Relationship between Environmental Scanning of Fashion Merchandisers and Characteristics of Information Sources

패션머천다이저 환경탐색 형태와 정보매체 특성과의 관계에 관한 연구

Fashion merchandiser profession is a highly information-intensive job. In fact, a merchandiser is to acquire a variety of information mainly from external environment and to analyze it in order to come to an informed decision. Despite a significant amount of past studies on environment scanning, their main concern was of managerial work. And, some fashion design studies have only touched the issue of information source in a descriptive tone. Here, we attempt to analyze empirically fashion merchandisers' environmental scanning activities. Our results can be stated as follows : 1) Though the quality of information source has a positive relationship with its use, the accessibility does not. 2) There is no significant difference between the use of relational source and the use of non-relational source. 3) Internet is being used more at the initial stage(opening) of information seeking than at the orientation and consolidation stage.