• The International Journal of Costume Culture
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.101-103
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• 2010

Liberalization may be described as the opening up of the economy to the outside world by relaxing government trade and economic policy restrictions to allow imports. In Kenya, this took place in the early 1990s and it had negative and positive effects on businesses manufacturing and retailing clothing and textiles. This case study narrates what has happened over the last 20 years to businesses in Nairobi, Kenya dealing in clothing and textiles. Some of the original businesses have closed down and been replaced by new ones. More small scale Kenyan businesses have been started dealing in clothing imports from the East and West selling both new and second hand clothes. There has been increased employment in the small scale clothing and textiles sector in garment making and retailing. All in all, liberalization has forced large and medium scale textile manufacture to change strategy so that they target selling to the export market more than to the local market.

• Fashion Information and Technology
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• v.10
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• pp.10-17
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• 2013

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.45-61
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• 2020

As consumers have transformed into the influential entities in the recent consumption environment, it needs a new concept to describe their characteristics. Drawn on the notion of smart consumer experience, this study views the multiple traits of new consumers as consumer smartness. Therefore, elaborating the concept of consumer smartness, this study aims to develop its measurement and validate it by examining the relationship with external variables. Two online surveys were conducted by a professional survey company that had nationwide consumer panels. A total of 531 adult consumers who had purchased fashion goods online completed a self-administered questionnaires. A series of exploratory and confirmative factor analysis generated 21 measuring items with six underlying constructs of consumer smartness such as innovativeness, opinion leadership, self-disclosure, marketing literacy, dissatisfaction, and technology sophistication. In order to validate the measurement, this study conducted a Pearson's correlation test and structural equation modeling analysis with consumer smartness and external constructs. The result shows that there was a significant positive relationship between consumer smartness and behavioral intentions online. In addition, consumer smartness influenced their shopping and sharing intention which supported the validity of new measurement of consumer smartness. This study provides a theoretical and empirical ground of understanding consumer smartness as new consumer characteristics in the changing environment of fashion retailing.

• Asian Journal of Business Environment
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.15-22
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• 2019

Purpose: Omni-channel retailing is a new retail phenomenon. Consumers in the omni-channel environment do not rely on one channel but integrate different channels from the same retailers freely during a particular shopping journey. The purpose of this study is to better understand omni-channel shoppers in the fashion retailing context. The present study uses consumer characteristics -- fashion innovativeness, technology innovativeness, and fashion purchase involvement -- as determinants predicting consumers' omni-channel shopping intentions for fashion products. Research design, data, and methodology: Data were collected from 403 U.S. consumers, and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was performed to test proposed hypotheses. The survey for this research consisted of three parts. The first part measured consumer traits in terms of their innovativeness and purchase involvement. The second part was designed to measure consumers' omni-channel shopping intentions, and the third part gathered consumer demographic information. Results: The findings confirmed that fashion innovativeness, technology innovativeness, and fashion purchase involvement positively affected consumers' omni-channel shopping intentions. Conclusions: Fashion retailers should integrate various customer touchpoints and offer mobile-enabled technologies to boost consumer traffic to both online and offline stores. They also need to create a shopping environment that is optimized for customer engagement in various shopping processes and allow them to explore different shopping channel options for best purchase decisions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.148-158
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• 2018

This study analyzes recent trends in fashion retailing instigated by the fourth industrial revolution and approaches the trends in terms of the convergence of big data and artificial intelligence. The findings are as below. First, companies like 'Edited' and 'Stylumia' offer solutions that support the strategic decisions of fashion brands and fashion retailers by analyzing big data using artificial intelligence. Second, the convergence of big data and artificial intelligence scales personalized service on the web as examples of 'Coded Couture', 'StitchFix', and 'Thread'. Third, the insights gained from artificial intelligence and big data help create new fashion retailing platforms such as 'Botshop' and 'Lyst'. Last, artificial intelligence and big data assist with design. 'Ivyrevel' designs digital fashion, assisted by a macroscopic perspective on fashion trends, market and consumers through the analysis of big data. The Fourth Industrial Revolution brings changes across all industries that will likely accelerate. The fashion industry is also undergoing many changes with advancements in scientific technology. The convergence of big data and artificial intelligence will play a key role in the future of fast-moving industry like fashion, where fickle tastes of consumers are the main drivers.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.91-94
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• 2001

The exponential growth of the Internet usage has motivated the launching of many commercial business web sites. Internet as a purchasing medium shows several unique characteristics because of its customer- driven technologies and absence of physical products. Thus, new commercial medium provokes a reclassification of products. Twenty five types of commercial Products are empirically tested in the Internet retailing and found to be grouped into four categories. This classification framework is investigated in the view of involvement and web technology Furthermore, this paper proposes four business web implementation strategies - impressive, simple, sensory, and semantic - based on the product classification. Proposed guidelines on business web might increase customer satisfaction.

• Journal of Distribution Research
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.55-69
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• 1998

One of the urgently-needed retail strategies is to lower the labor expenses of the store. For this purpose, more stores are developing new, fancy techniques to make consumers work for the stores without paying them. Examples include self-service system, consumer suggestion system and others. These are called customer voluntary performance. Intiated by Bettencourt(1997), customer voluntary performance(CVT) becomes an important concept in modern retailing. This paper applies three dimensions of CVP (loyalty, cooperation, participation) to the setting of Consumer Complaint Intentions(CCI). Similar to CVP, CCI has three dimensions in itself (voice, private, third party). The major focus of this empirical research is on finding the possible relationships between three dimensions of CVP and three dimensions of CCI. The results show that participation is positively related to the levels of consumer complaint intentions, whereas loyalty is negatively related to the levels of them. This implies that the weak tactic of CVP(loyalty) may reduce the levels of complaint, but strong one(participation) may not be so. More conceptual and empirrical studies are urgently needed.

• Korean Journal of Human Ecology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.335-348
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• 2000

This study examines changes in economy status of retailers with self-employed and introduce a re-education program for enhancing their market competition supported by KeiMyung University and the city of Daeku. There are more than 80 participants for this program, mostly employed in small business in such as supermarket, apparel industry, conventional type of market and so on. The questionnaires were administered to all participants and analyzed the level of satisfaction for categories included in survey to evaluate the program. The results of study leads us to suggest the ways how those small business families can survive in furture and give the motives to develop new marketing strategies.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.5-15
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• 2020

Purpose : Today's retailers are integrating new VR technology into their new marketing strategies. Thus, this research aims to understand the role of virtual experiences in the circumstance of sales channels. Research design, data and methodology : Our model hypothesizes that five key factors determine the consumer experience of VR in the virtual retailing context: smartness, vividness, interactivity, playfulness, escape. Information access and flow are mediating variables that connect key drivers and VR satisfaction. Information access and flow then give influence to satisfaction towards VR. Satisfaction serves as a mediator that determines changes in consumer's dual intention: intention to revisit VR and intention to visit the real site. Results : According to the test results, every path except the relationship between information access and satisfaction of VR is accepted as expected at the significance level of 0.05. Conclusions : This research emphasizes the potential importance of VR and continue VR marketing research as an advent research area. Through the dual-path model, this study found that the primary function of VR is information access and flow experience. This result shows that most VR users value emotional benefits rather than rational benefits provided by VR. Finally, the satisfaction of VR can stimulate both the intention to use the VR and the intention to visit real mall.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.33-50
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• 2022

Purpose: This pilot study aims to conceptualize a new green marketing mix for retail consumers based on Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model. Moreover, it also aims to conceptualize a testable research model of new green marketing mix with consumers' green purchasing behavior, and to validate the measurement model with traditional as well as modern suggested validating techniques. Research design, data and methodology: A pilot test data from 75 respondents of retail buyers of energy-efficient electric appliances in Pakistan were tested for the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) by examining a measurement model of the construct through different validation techniques (like Composite Reliability, McDonald's Omega (ω), rho (ρA), HTMT, etc.) as heretofore these scales were not validated through these modern methods. Results: The results revealed that the instrument has a certain degree of reliability and validity through different validating techniques. All the measurement items reach the suggested threshold values. Conclusions: Therefore, this study conceptualized an integrated framework of all the three stakeholders of the environment (government, companies, and public or consumers) to achieve environmental sustainability. Hence, future studies can extend these findings and conduct a full-scale study to establish an empirical relationship between the 5G's of green marketing for retailing businesses and consumers' green purchase behavior.