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http://dx.doi.org/10.5850/JKSCT.2012.36.2.152

Development of a Customer Orientation Scale for Clothing Salespeople  

Han, Sang-In (Dept. of Fashion Design, Sungkyunkwan University)
Hwang, Sun-Jin (Dept. of Fashion Design, Sungkyunkwan University)
Publication Information
Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles / v.36, no.2, 2012 , pp. 152-164 More about this Journal
Abstract
This study develops a valid and reliable scale to evaluate customer orientation for clothing salespeople in order to provide a foundation for systematic and empirical research in the apparel industry. The study was conducted in two phases. First, a scale was developed to evaluate the customer orientation of clothing salespeople through a qualitative method. The second phase involved the verification of the validity of the developed evaluation questions through a quantitative method. The subjects of this study were 327 clothing salespeople, and the results were analyzed using AMOS 7.0 and SPSS 15.0. The results were as follows: First, customer orientation questions were elicited from in-depth interviews with fashion sales-people, analyses of fashion magazine articles, and previous studies. From the results, 38 preliminary questions were selected based on categorization, modification, and expert analyses of the content validity. Second, in order to verify the validity of the customer orientation scale that consisted of 24 questions in 7 factors, we performed a verification of the convergent validity through an assessment of the magnitude of standardization factor loading, average variance extracted (AVE), and construct reliability. Discriminant validity was verified using the AVE of each of the two constructs and a comparison of the square of the correlation between the constructs. According to the results, the measured values were above or near the guideline values that demonstrates the validity of the customer orientation scale.
Keywords
Customer orientation; Scale development; Salespeople; Validity;
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