The purpose of the study was to investigate Oriental women's clothing acquisition behaviors and to compare their body measurements with the measurements listed in Voluntary Product Standard, PS 42-70. A questionnaire was administered to 101 Oriental women residing in Tucson, Arizona. Thirty-nine body measurements were taken from each subject in the sample. The major type of store used most frequently was department store. It appears that Oriental women were not impulsive buyers or influenced by suggestive selling techniques but highly represented careful shopping characteristics. Fit was the most important consideration in purchasing a garment. Newspapers were the major information source of fashion for Oriental women. A significant fitting problem area appeared in garment length when Oriental women purchased ready-to-wear. Bigger differences were found in vertical than the circumference body measurements for Oriental women when the mean of body measurements was compared with the PS 42-70 measurements.

The first objective of this research was to identify whether Asian-Americans having higher than average levels of income and education represent an appropriate target market for four food product categories. Second, the impact of national origin membership, demographic variables, and level of acculturation on food consumption was determined. In addition, perceptions related to sensory and nutritional factors and the cultural acceptability of the products were identified and interpreted to determine if the variables differed among specific groups of Asian-American consumers.

Very little empirical research has been conducted on Asian Americans as a whole in relation to their consumer behavior, specifically their clothing behavior. A review of literature demonstrated that Asian Americans have been studied from different psychographic and sociological aspects. However, the apparel shopping behavior of this market has received only slight research attention. The purpose of this study was to compare Asian Americans and Caucasian Americans with regards to apparel shopping orientations. This study also examined the relationship between apparel shopping orientations and intensity of ethnic identification among Asian Americans. The multimediation model of consumer behavior (EKB model) proposed by Engel, Kollat and Blackwell (1973) was used as a theoretical framework for the present study. Based on the EKB model, it was expected that people of different cultural backgrounds were different in terms of their consumer behavior. Another conceptual framework used in the present study was the concept of shopping orientations, introduced by Stone (1954). Apparel shopping orientations refer to motivations, interests and attitudes toward apparel shopping. Seven shopping orientations were selected for the present study. They were: economic shopping, personalizing shopping, recreational shopping, social shopping (including friend social shopping and family social shopping), brand loyal shopping, impulse shopping and fashion orientations. The fashion orientation included four factors: fashion leadership, fashion interest, fashion importance and antifashion attitude. The nature of the study was observational, in which no variables were manipulated. The data collection method involved a mailed questionnaire. The questionnaire included questions measuring seven shopping orientations, Asian Americans' intensity of ethnic identification and questions on demographic characteristics. A purposive sample of 300 Asian American and 300 Caucasian American students were drawn from the students enrolled at Oregon State University for 1990 Fall term. A pretest was conducted before the data were collected. Dillman's "Total Design Method" (1978) was used as a guideline when implementing the data collection procedures. The response rates were 75.9% for the total sample, with 72.6% for the Asian group and 79.0% for the Caucasian group. The collected data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), t-test and Pearson correlation. Significant differences were found between Asian and Caucasian American respondents on social shopping, including both friend social and family social shopping, brand loyal shopping, and fashion leadership orientations. The Asian respondents were found to be significantly more brand loyal and liked to shop with friends or family members than were the Caucasian respondents. The Asian American students were also found to be more likely to regard themselves as fashion leaders than were the Caucasian students in this study. Also a negative correlation was found between intensity of ethnic identification and fashion importance among Asian American respondents. This finding indicated that the more an Asian respondent identified with Asian ethnicity, the less (s)he considered being well-dressed to be important. / Graduation date: 1991

No description available.

This thesis employed a series of surveys of Asian Americans residing in the Inland Empire to determine their personal views towards direct marketing. Data is broken out by age, gender, ethnicity and employment status.