Consumers in a social network: the perception of clothing quality per gender

Abstract

Purpose -The general objective of this paper is to evaluate the determinant attributes of the perception of clothing quality by the users of a social network and to verify if there are any differences of evaluation of these determinants between genders.Design/methodology/approach -To achieve the objective, a survey was conducted with a sample of 295 consumers. All participants, regardless of gender, were asked to access the SurveyMonkey site link and to answer the questions regarding the quality of clothing for both men and women. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and variance analysis (ANOVA).Findings -The main results show that: 1. The consumers of garments regard as highly important to take into consideration quality attributes when deciding to buy clothes, especially for women in relation to menswear; 2. Women has a higher perception than men as for the evaluation of the quality attributes of both women's wear and menswear; and, 3. Clothing consumers, in particular consumers of women's products, only consider to purchase such products if they have, in particular, style, fabric quality and fair price.Originality/value -This research filled in some theoretical and methodological gaps with regard to giving emphasis to gender differences in clothing quality assessment. This is in line with the conclusions of quality research conducted long ago, such as Olson & Jacoby's (1972), which findings are specific to the type of product and/or consumer investigated. Therefore, generalizations beyond the product or the consumers examined are of dubious validity.

Consumer Perception of Quality of Clothing Products: A Lesson for the Business Sector Arising from Czech Evidence

“…First and foremost, sex has not resulted in being a decisive socio-demographic variable in the assessment of perceived garment quality. This is a clear discrepancy with the existing research (Gitimu et al, 2013, Freire Castelo & de Oliveira Cabral, 2018, Lee & Workman, 2021. One can object that this is because our volunteer sample (120 respondents) was much smaller than the convenience sample (246 respondents).…”

Investigation in Understanding the Influence of Brand Preferences on Purchase Intention: Examples of Indonesian Women’s Apparel Brand

“…The identification process of consumer preferences toward apparel products can also be conducted through intrinsic (Wilfling et al, 2021). Additionally, previous studies found that in product cues investigation, intrinsic cues of apparel products affect consumer brand preferences (Bezuidenhout et al, 2016;Castelo & Cabral, 2018;Fiore & Damhorst, 1992;Shukla et al, 2022). Along with extrinsic cues, intrinsic cues have an important role in product evaluation to shape consumer brand preferences (Semaan et al, 2019).…”

Consumer expectations and perception of clothing comfort in sports and exercise garments

“…The apparel industry faces challenges in satisfying consumers’ needs due to the change of priorities in the previous decades. During the 1980s and 1990s, consumers tended to buy fashionable clothing, whereas today, consumers are generally more value-orientated (Freire Castelo and de Oliveira Cabral, 2018). Understanding consumers’ perceptions of apparel’s quality are essential for providing satisfaction, which could lead to a potential competitive advantage, larger market share and higher revenue for apparel companies.…”

“…In this regard, one clothing aspect that has to be studied and quantified is comfort. Human perception of clothing comfort is made when sensory information is received, processed and then compared to past sensory experiences, ultimately representing people’s expectations (Rahman, 2011; Freire Castelo and de Oliveira Cabral, 2018). These perceptions lead to the formulation of different clothing attributes, which have different importance for the consumers and affect purchase decisions.…”

“…Extrinsic attributes are product-related, however, are not part of the physical product. Examples for extrinsic cues are price, brand label, store and country of origin (Hatch and Roberts, 1985; Swinker and Hines, 2006; Rahman, 2011; Freire Castelo and de Oliveira Cabral, 2018). In the perception of quality, across a wide range of products intrinsic cues are considered to be more important than extrinsic ones (Fiore and Damhorst, 1992).…”