Master of Science / Department of Apparel, Textiles, and Interior Design / Joy Kozar / China is the world’s largest apparel producer, exporter, and maintains the largest domestic apparel market. Since economic reform in the 1980s that opened up the Chinese market for foreign investors, China’s domestic apparel market has attracted many foreign (Western) apparel brands (Shenkar, 2005). More than 10,000 different international apparel brands share China’s domestic apparel market, including brands from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States, Britain, and South Korea, among others. Around 2,000 Chinese domestic apparel brands have experienced difficultly surviving in China’s domestic apparel market. Besides the large number of foreign (Western) apparel brands, counterfeit apparel products have grown faster than China’s government can control. As a result, China has become the world’s largest counterfeit market. This has become a secondary threat to China’s domestic apparel market and national economy. Additionally, because of economic growth and modernization in China, Chinese consumers have accepted more Westernized values, but also retained their traditional face-saving values. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore how their attitudes toward counterfeit apparel products, China’s domestic apparel brands, and foreign (Western) apparel brands are influenced by their level of perception about knowledge and attitudes toward counterfeit apparel products, face-saving values, materialistic values, and ethical values. This study utilized a sample of males and females between the ages of 18 and 64, who reside in Guangzhou, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Wuhan, China. A questionnaire was utilized as part of this study and data was collected online by SOJUMP Survey Company. A total of 1,192 participants (736 males and 456 females) participated in this study. There are in total nine significant relationships that have been found in this study. First, the researcher found a positive relationship between Chinese consumers’ perception about knowledge of counterfeit apparel products and their attitudes about counterfeit apparel products. Second and third, the present study also discovered that Chinese consumers with favorable attitudes of foreign apparel brands or negative attitude of China’s domestic apparel brands would similarly hold positive attitudes of counterfeit apparel products. Fourth, the present scholar concluded that Chinese consumers with favorable attitudes of China’s domestic apparel brands tend to hold negative attitudes of counterfeit apparel products. Fifth and sixth, it was found that Chinese consumers with high level of face-saving values show positive attitudes of foreign (Western) apparel brands and counterfeit apparel products. Seventh, Chinese consumers with high level of face-saving values also possess strong materialistic values. Consequently Chinese consumers with strong materialistic values tend to hold positive attitudes of counterfeit apparel products and foreign (Western) apparel products, but negative attitudes of China’s domestic apparel brands. The findings of this study show that Chinese consumers have a very low level of perception about knowledge of counterfeit apparel products. It is necessary to connect educators, government, apparel industry, and brand owners to develop and enhance anti-counterfeit educational programs. These programs should clearly explain the perception about knowledge of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), trademark, and the negative causes of counterfeit products are warranted. Also, it is better for China’s domestic apparel brand companies to develop better brand images and improve product quality to meet Chinese consumers’ face-saving standards and materialistic values.

The growth of fast fashion retailers, availability of knockoff fashion apparel, and proposed apparel copyright law prompted this study. Fast fashion retailers are expanding rapidly and producing knockoffs fashion apparel in a matter of weeks, but current U.S. copyright laws do not protect apparel. The primary purpose of this study was to identify prominent visual fashion apparel attributes that could determine perceived copyright infringement. A secondary purpose was to examine the effects of fashion apparel attributes on perceived copyright infringement, perceived risk, and purchase intention. A sequential exploratory mixed method approach was used to explore the relationship between: Attributes, perceived copyright infringement, perceived risk, and purchase intention. This study consisted of a: Study one, study two, and study three. Twelve hypotheses were proposed, and five were supported. Quality significantly affected both perceived copyright infringement and purchase intention. Performance, social, and asset significantly affected purchase intention of knockoff fashion apparel.

The purposes of this study were to investigate attitudes toward apparel shopping and apparel shopping behavior of a selected group of working women in the Dallas, Texas, area. The study also examined relationships of occupation, education, age and marital status to apparel shopping attitudes and behavior. The study concluded that working women enjoy shopping for apparel but do encounter certain frustrations. Working women shop for apparel every few weeks or more and most often purchase apparel in department stores. The majority use charge accounts and often purchase apparel at reduced prices. Chi square analysis revealed few significant relationships between attitudes toward apparel shopping and apparel shopping behavior and the demographic variables of occupation, education, age and marital status.

Master of Science / Department of Apparel, Textiles and Interior Design / Joy Kozar / This study documents Saudi women who have succeeded in operating their own small businesses, namely in the production of apparel goods. The study notes the reasons that motivate women to establish this kind of work and the factors that help women to be successful in apparel production in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the study explores the challenges that women encounter in the apparel production field, as well as the commitment women have to offering employment to Saudi girls and young women. This study is important given a lack of appropriate employment opportunities for women in Saudi Arabia and the weak rate of women’s participation in the workforce in Saudi Arabia. Qualitative data was collected to gain in-depth information about the characteristics of successful female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. The current study also adds new insight related to entrepreneurial success and failures, stemming from factors identified by participants. As part of the study, it was discovered that Saudi female entrepreneurs were motivated by financial and non-financial factors, pull and push, and internal and external motives. Personal characteristics of the business owner, the quality of the product produced within the firm, advertising and promotion strategies, family support, previous education, availability of resources, and years of experience were all elements identified by participants as contributing to their success. Obstacles suffered by participants included competition, filing government paperwork, conflict between roles at work and home, marketplace changes, and lack of management skills. Finally, when asking the participants about their ability or willingness to extend their work to accommodate larger numbers of Saudi women, it was found that the business owners had several reasons for not planning to do this, including the lack of the skills needed for this industry upon Saudi women and the preference of Saudi women to work in the service sector.

The manner in which clothing is designed, produced and used is responsible for major negative impacts on the environment as well as major ethical and social issues on a global scale. The increased concern for sustainability issues in the industry is similarly argued to have led to transformations of the business context of apparel companies, that have been shown to increasingly incorporate sustainability in their corporate strategies. This thesis focuses on sustainability strategies of Swedish clothing brands operating in the global apparel and fashion industry, with the aim to explore the topic of sustainability in relation to the Swedish apparel industry. Through qualitative interviews with sustainability managers and consultants working within the industry, it explores the drivers for working with sustainability as well as main challenges for achieving sustainability within the apparel industry. The results show that the concept of sustainability is indeed highly complex and broad in regard to the design, production and use of clothes. Companies are influenced by many factors that drive change towards sustainability. The future of the apparel sector is believed to be increasingly affected by new ideas to produce and indeed also consume clothes that challenge the dominating linear system. In conclusion, the industry faces many challenges concerning sustainability, but the proactive approaches by apparel companies seem to create new opportunities for change. Also, the anticipated further increase in interest for sustainability in society and subsequently among consumers and other actors may stimulate further advancements of the strategic responses among apparel companies.

O presente estudo aborda o processo de desenvolvimento da modelagem da calça jeans feminina e suas particularidades, propondo, de acordo com a experiência prática do autor, diretrizes para construir seu diagrama e molde. Este trabalho busca como resultado a modelagem dessa peça de vestuário que seja adequada a um número considerável de corpos e vá ao encontro da anatomia feminina brasileira. Assim, ao vivenciar empiricamente o traçado dos moldes da referida peça em diversas situações nas empresas nas quais trabalhou e trabalha, o autor do presente estudo compilou, de forma sistêmica, as diretrizes apresentadas aqui, desde o traçado do diagrama e molde, passando pelos ajustes necessários ao bom caimento da peça e à adaptação de modelos, a partir do molde base. Desta forma, o conjunto de diretrizes resultantes do presente estudo fundamenta-se, principalmente, na vivência prática do autor, ajustada à bibliografia específica do setor. Para tal procedimento, fez-se uso do método empírico-investigativo, que partiu de experimentações e combinou técnicas de modelagens conhecidas pelo autor / This study discusses the development process of patternmaking women\'s jeans pants and its peculiarities, propose, according to the experience of the author, guidelines for building your diagram. This work aims at patternmaking as a result of this piece of clothing that is suitable to a large number of bodies and meets the Brazilian female anatomy. Thus, the empirical experience of the layout templates that play in various situations in business where he worked and works, the author has compiled the present study, in a systematic way the guidelines presented here, since the layout of the diagram, through the adjustments necessary for the proper trim part and adaptation of models, from the basic base. Thus, the set of guidelines resulting from this study is based mainly on practical experience of the author, adjusted to specific references in the industry. For this procedure made use of empirical investigative method that left trials and combined patternmaking techniques known by the author

Evaluating the existing practices of sustainability within the outdoor apparel industry, this research questions the relationship that certain sustainability aspects have with the price of goods in this specific market. Through a hedonic pricing model, this research provides an estimate of the value placed on certain aspects surrounding environmental and social sustainability. In a growing industry, the application of sustainable practices throughout the supply chain has the potential to influence customer purchasing patterns and pricing models for outdoor apparel brands. This research found the type of material used to have a statistically significant impact on the price of an item; no statistical significance was found in the level of brand sustainability.

Pricing decision is the minority of all important decisions which can apparently influence a firm's profit-making within extremely short time. In an era of meagre profit, firms cannot stand any more injury caused of mistake at pricing. However, lots of managers still make pricing decision according to their experience or the action of other competitors without any mechanism of price-determining based on their firms' resource condition. The subject of this research is to probe the abiding price-reducing strategy for fashion appearing firms. Fashion apparel is a kind of commodities with seasonality and popularity, and is an example of all perishable goods. For all sorts of characteristic such as the need for long lead time before production, short time span for sale , and the low salvage value after season...etc., it makes firms reduce price to close out inventories by the end of seasons to evade value loss. When it comes to price-reducing, the fashion apparel is quite different from other commodities. It is a kind of commodity which has speciality of phased and monotonicity on price reduction. Therefore, it lacks two kinds of elasticity which are price-adjusting at any time and adjusting the price range at will. For the characteristic of close interdependence between product and time, and the normal demand on price-reducing, fashion apparel firms need some decision tools which are more fast, correct, and practical than any other ones. With two main parameters which are 'the levels of unsold inventory' and ' the length of season remaining ' along with two parameters which are 'discount factor' and ' the salvage value after season ', this research constructs out an stochastic dynamic programming model to maximize the expect profit and offer an program for calculating the optimal price-reduced range and time. After the analysis of generality and sensitivity with this model, it is found that the characteristics of this model are in conformity with theoretical research and real phenomenon of market. Besides, it is suitable for various kinds of price elastic demand. Hence, this model can be proved to be able to extend to other similar industries with the same nature.

Use Gary Gereffi's Global Commodity Chains to explain and analyse Global apparel industry and Taiwan apparel industry,besides to describe the transitionary role of Taiwan in Global apparel Commodity Chains.

International business is much more complicated than domestic business because countries differ in many ways. Countries have different political systems economic systems. Cultural practices can vary dramatically from country to country, as the education and skill level of the population, and countries are at different stages of economic development. Moreover, development of multinational strategies involves consideration of threats, opportunities, key success factors, and strategy options and issues that do not appear when the analysis is restricted to operations within a single country. In particular, the evaluation of a market must take into account the political and economic risks associated with individual countries. Thus the external analysis becomes much more demanding. South Africa's trade and industrial policy has moved away from a highly protected, inward-looking economy towards an internationally competitive system that is able to capitalize on its comparative advantages. Enhancement of the competitiveness of industries on the domestic and international markets has consequently become a prime focus of the country's industrial policy. International trade in textiles and clothing is conducted on an immense scale. Textile and clothing producers were responsible for 9.3 per cent of world exports of manufacturers in 2001 . Barriers to entry for new firms and exporters are low, and consequently the degree of international competition is intense. Competitive advantage is very difficult to sustain for long periods of time. Newcomers speedily challenge successful exporters of basic products, and they must redirect their activities towards the production of higher value-added textiles and clothing in order to survive and prosper. Textile industry represents a main role in South Africa's economy. However, during the year of 2003 Department of Trade and industry has recorded 20,000 job losses due to significant increase in imports, largely from China, as well as a fairly noticeable decline in exports both facilitated by the strengthening of the Rand. South Mrica and Mauritius are the only countries in the region with established textile industries, but the cost of labour is relatively expensive and productivity is lower than in some competitor nations, such as China. The labour union - SA Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) believes the root causes of the large-scale job losses was due to the South African government's rush to liberalise markets by cutting import tariffs in the mid- to late 1990s. During the 1980s the clothing and textile industry benefited from protectionist tariffs levied on imported goods. However, this changed when South Mrica signed the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). The government agreed that clothing and textile tariffs would be reduced, but the union contends that they were cut more quickly and aggressively than the World Trade Organisation (WTO) had expected. The industry was not able to cope with that, and what followed were enormous job losses. Multi-national organizations from South Africa have a choice to extend their global reach, due to the government export incentive programme, the mature companies can diversify their firms to emerging market in order to exploit their technological advantages and invest internationally. If a firm's primary goal is to maximize their shareholder's value, then they and probably the economy are better off if they invest or export where they can earn the best return. As they do so, change in the global macro-environment further confounds the choices inherent in building a strategic organization. Some understanding of the organization's external and internal environment always drives strategy, as an international organizational better choice. In the most general sense, the long-run monetary benefits of doing business in South Mrica are a function of the size of the textile and clothing market, the present wealth (purchasing power) of consumers in the market, and the likely future wealth of consumers. Also the South Mrican multi national companies can have the opportunity to gain export market in USA, Canada, Europe and other trade countries in South Mrica. In order to achieve economic growth and competitiveness In South Mrica, it is recommend that the several issues cutting across the textile industrial sector need to be addressed through knowledge transfer, training, investment and management. Innovative technologies need to be developed to strengthen the competitiveness. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Natal, 2004.