• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.360-375
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• 2011

The fashion market focuses on consumers and maximizes consumers' satisfaction. The fashion market has been segmented to better satisfy the variety of consumer group. Although market segmentation has been studied, efficiency and effectiveness of market segmentation continuously bring problems. Also, problems of prediction about real consumer behavior, and efficiency and effectiveness of standards are pointed out. The purpose of this study is to determine the most important variables for dividing fashion product buyers. This study was designed as qualitative study and in-depth interview was conducted. The in-depth interview was conducted with five experts in fashion intelligence agency. In-depth interview was completed by an analytic induction and an investigator triangulation. Questions were about characteristics, demographic characteristics, important factors and fashion buying relationship, and interests of current clothing shoppers. The results of qualitative research demonstrated that clothing shoppers, with their valuable consumption and selective buying behaviors, seek differentiated products. They also long for high quality apparel for its price, because of their valuable consumption and price centered tendency. They illustrated active sides, such as enthusiastic information searching and emotional or experiential consumption, rather than attitudinal sides. The variables for dividing fashion product buyers included: "innovative seeking", "symbolic seeking", "personalized seeking", "quality-seeking", "selective seeking", "price-seeking", "utility-seeking", "hedonic seeking", "sensitive seeking", "brand-seeking", "digital seeking", "information-seeking", and "eco-seeking".

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.1028-1038
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• 2011

A blog has significant effect as a new online medium and as a tool to share information with its powerful networking function. Blogs are established based on personal experience and their impact is stronger than conventional media in terms of informativeness, credibility and interactivity. Such characteristics of blogs lead to blog commitment (a phenomenon that has behavioral consequences) that eventually influences consumer fashion purchase behavior. The more a consumer is interested in fashion and seeks diverse information from a wide range of media, the more personally committed they become to certain blogs; in addition, they will also post the results of their fashion product purchases on their blog to further create and reproduce information. This research discovers how blog commitment affects fashion product purchase behavior and information reproduction activity among consumers as well as explores the impact of blog characteristics and information variety seeking by individual consumers on these factors. The data was collected from 428 adults who purchased a fashion product based on information they found on a blog. The results are as follows. First, blog characteristics are composed of accessibility, interactivity, credibility of the information, and informativeness. Second, in terms of the blog commitment, informativeness, credibility, and consumer information diversification (respectively), turned out to have positive effects; in addition, accessibility and credibility had positive effects for corporate blogs. The comparison between private and corporate blogs showed that consumers tend to be more committed to private blogs. Third, in terms of the brand attitude, private/corporate blog commitment, credibility, and consumer information diversification (respectively) had a positive influence. Fourth, blog characteristics and consumer information diversification led consumers (through private/corporate blog commitment) to form a favorable attitude towards the brand and purchase products that resulted in information reproduction of the purchased product.

• Management Science and Financial Engineering
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.73-91
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• 2007

We investigate factors that influence the choice of high-share brands(HSBs) vs. low-share brands(LSBs) among various product and consumer characteristics related to brand-share perceptions. Specifically, using 8 product categories varying in terms of purchase decision involvement, we show how the influencing factors vary across the categories. At the general level that cover all the 8 categories, our hierarchical Bayesian regressions analysis shows that factors that favor high-share brands are purchase decision involvement, search goods, experience goods, price-quality relationship, positive network externalities, and price-prestige beliefs. Conversely, consumers who value variety seeking and need for uniqueness favor low-share brands. The effects of these factors, however, vary across product categories. The identification of these characteristics can help brand managers establish a more effective brand-share strategy in such areas as setting an optimal market share goal, extending a brand, and developing ad copy. Furthermore, our consumer segmentation analysis demonstrates the general market has two distinct segments - (1) a segment composed of HSB buyers(86%) and (2) a segment composed of LSB buyers(14%). The two segments are also shown to have different significant factors that explain their brand choice. Our segmentation analysis can help marketers establish a marketing strategy that targets a specific segment of interest.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.1673-1682
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to investigate differences in: 1) importance of buying motives including external stimuli and sales promotional stimuli among groups according to levels of diversity orientation; 2) importance of buying motives including external stimuli and sales promotional stimuli among their subordinate factors. Questionnaires were distributed 340 women who aged between 20 and 30. A sample of 317 women responded to the questionnaire. Using SPSS/PC version 12.0, factor analysis reliability analysis, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Repeated measure ANOVA were used for the data analysis. As results, there were significant differences in importance of buying motives including external stimuli and sales promotional stimuli among groups according to levels of diversity orientation. Also, there were significant differences in importance of external stimuli and sales promotional stimuli among their subordinate factors.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.65 no.1
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• pp.150-163
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• 2015

Due to desire for more variation from male consumers within the men's fashion market in Korea, there has been an ongoing development of departmentalization of fashion styles. The Generation-X man, in particular, is the most active member of our current day society, and will be the principal agent in the senior market from here on forth. Thus, this study categorized their preferred fashion styles, and will seek to analyze the behaviors related to the pursuit of clothing of the Generation-X man. The qualitative investigations of the Q-method as well as the quantitative investigation of the SPSS 12.0 were used in conjunction as the method of study. Additionally, images and types resulting from the preceding first-year study entitled "The Type and Characteristics of the Modern Men's Fashion Images" were utilized as part of the surveys. As a result of the Q-method, which was used to derive the preferred fashion styles of the Generation-X man, they were classified into three categories: the classic suit preferring 'conservative class type', the polished, comfortable style preferring 'modern sophisticated type', and the adventure and variety seeking 'uninhibited individualistic style'. After analyzing the factors which influence clothing preference behaviors of these men, a total of seven causes were drawn from the results, including: conservative indifference to fashion, others conscious pursuit of fashion, the aim to show off brand name products, high involvement in the aspect of design, pursuit of TPO, pursuit of self-image, and conformity to fashion. The elements that revealed differences in the behaviors in pursuing clothing within the preferred fashion style types of the Generation-X man included the conservative indifference to fashion, and others conscious pursuit of fashion, which therefore shows that rather than enjoying the fashion lifestyle, these men possess a more conservative disposition instead.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.95-102
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• 2019

Purpose - The purpose of the research is to identify the demographic characteristics of the customers with high private label purchase intention. According to the previous research demographics such as gender, age, income, and residence type affect private label purchase intention indirectly through psychographics rather than directly. For instance, higher income group is time pressured, price-insensitive, quality-sensitive, less likely to enjoy shopping utilitarian products, and less likely to be variety-seeking. The main contribution of this research is to verify the results found in the previous empirical foreign research using scanner data and to investigate the differences of the characteristics of private label users between Korea and the foreign countries. Research design, data, and methodology - In order to empirically test the proposed hypotheses, scanner data of a Korean major super center was analyzed. Results - Empirical results show that private labels are more favored by old people over 50s, dwellers in individual house, lower income group, and frequent store visitors. Age of 30s, dwellers in the apartment of 30 pyung, higher income group, and consumers who purchased a large amount are less likely to purchase private labels. Gender turned out not to affect private label purchase. It should be noted that there is a significant multicollinearity among independent variables. Conclusions - The research findings provide managerial implication for retailers' private label strategy. In general, retailers heavily send private label coupons to the customers with high purchase volume. According to the research, however, store visit frequency is much more positively associated with private label purchase than purchase amount. The study has some limitations. The samples are only consumers with private label purchase experience. The data were drawn from one store and only 8 commodity products were used for the analysis. Also, if more demographics were available, a more complete description on the private brand users' profile could have been derived. We propose the following future research. Research using the data including consumers without private label experience, research investigating direction of causality between private label loyalty and store loyalty, and research using hedonic private label products such as TV and PC could be promising.