No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1998. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. [181]-186) and index.

Self-regulatory Code of Conduct has widely been adopted by international brands to manage CSR issues in apparel and footwear supply chain for the last 2 decades. Increasingly, more apparel and footwear brands started to expand CSR scope to include environmental management in their supply chain. However, only very few international brands have disclosed their efforts on environmental management in their supply chain. This study aims to find out how apparel and footwear brands implement environmental management in their supply chain. Furthermore, what motivates them to carry out environmental management, and lastly, what challenges the industry encounters in carrying out effective environmental management. Primary and secondary data research were carried out in this study. Primary research, in a form of self-administered survey, was conducted for 11 brands and 15 of their respective suppliers. Secondary research was conducted through desktop research to gather additional information from brands, NGOs, academic studies and news. The study revealed environmental management in apparel and footwear supply chain is becoming more important. However, most of the brands’ approaches on environmental management are loose (i.e. lack industry-wide sustainably environmental management strategy), and small in scope (i.e. first tier supplier only). It is suggested apparel and footwear brands should improve effectiveness of environmental management program in their supply chain, by applying different implementation strategies internally, with both brands’ and suppliers’ governments, suppliers as well as their stakeholders. / published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

M. Tech. Information Networks / This dissertation reports on a systematic evaluation of the quality of services that are provided by clothing industry in South Africa. Textile and apparel clothing industry is an important leading segment of the world economy. Clothing retail stores are continuously striving to improve their service quality towards delivering customer satisfaction, which has surfaced as one of the foundational blocks of modern competitive business. The methodological evaluation of clothing stores follows two essential steps. The first step applies Partial Least Squares algorithm to Taiwan-, Europe- and American customer satisfaction models to identify suitable quality criteria that influence customer satisfaction of clothing store service. The second step uses the identified quality criteria in a multiple criteria decision making algorithm to evaluate a set of 17 popular clothing stores in South Africa. The results of the evaluation of the clothing stores revealed the core competence of South African clothing industry in quality service delivery. The results of this study can be used to guide clothing stores on how to better improve the quality of their services. This supplies confirmation for additional enhancement on corporate competitiveness.

M. Tech. Fashion Design / The need to educate consumers about eco-friendly clothing cannot be over emphasized any longer, research has shown that consumers with environmental knowledge are likely to purchase eco-friendly products and would be willing to pay a premium price for such products. Cheap clothing rejects the central ethics of sustainability, and they catalyse unnecessary overconsumption behaviour worldwide. With an increase in purchasing power of many consumers, excessive consumption behaviour suggests that cheap fashion merchandise are purchased and disposed of rapidly by several consumer groups. The current fashion retail industry obtains new fashion styles and supplies new clothing ranges within short span of time enticing fervent consumers' with an impetuous buying behaviour, particularly the younger consumers. The majority of consumers do not understand that their buying behaviour and disposal behaviour impacts negatively on the environment. This is a particularly common in South Africa with very few retail shops offering eco-certified clothing merchandise. This study explores consumer awareness on what constitutes eco-fashion and if their knowledge could, in future, influence them towards sustainable buying behaviour. This study also considers educational measures taken by the South African government and non-governmental organisations to empower citizens with respect to environmental issues.

published_or_final_version / Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

Globally, the nature of competition is changing. Growing international prosperity, combined with the forces of globalisation, are creating a demand for greater product variety and quality. For producers this has meant the need to focus production on niche markets and to move from Fordist mass production to post-Fordist- flexible production systems that emphasise small batches of high quality customised products. Accompanying this shift is an increasing awareness within industry of the need to respond flexibly and rapidly to changing customer demands. In this increasingly cornpetitrve environment marketing and retailing arrangements are becoming critical to firm success. Close contact with customers has become increasingly important, promoting new forms of retailing arrangements, and a growing understanding of the role retail arrangements play' in satisfying consumer demand. At the same time, the growth in batch production for niche markets has created room for small enterprises to effectively compete with larger firms in producing for increasingly fragmented markets. Internationally, small firms have found that their competitive position can be strengthened through geographic clustering into what are sometimes called Industrial Districts. Clustered firms co-operate around a range of issues such as input purchasing, marketing and exporting. Finally , a shift to flexible production has been reflected in informalisation, the systematic shifting of production into the informal sector. These trends - the shifting basis of competition, the growth in flexible production, widening opportunities for small enterprises and growing informalisation - are particularly obvious in the clothing sector. They are especially relevant in South Africa where competition from low cost producers in Asia is forcing local clothing enterprises to concentrate production on high quality , high fashion garments for upper market segments in order to retain a share of the domestic market. This study attempts to determine to what extent the behaviour of a particular group of clothing enterprises - the small, mostly informal clothing enterprises operating at the Essenwood Craft Market - reflects these global trends. The activities of the Essenwood clothing enterprises were found to reflect the shift in the nature of competition, and particularly the growing importance of retailing and marketing arrangements for competitiveness. The enterprises were targeting niche markets , and emphasising product quality and design innovation. Retailing through the Craft Market allowed these small enterprises to benefit from an environment conducive to consumption, while facilitating close contact with customers. The firms were not, however, taking advantage of the clustering of retail arrangements to co-operate with one another on matters of mutual interest. The informal nature of these enterprises seemed to reflect a desire for economic independence, rather than the negative effects of economic restructuring, or a strategic shift of production from the formal to the informal sector. The study suggests that informal enterprises can be dynamic and growth-orientated, and questions whether the White Paper on Small Business recognises this. Useful support for dynamic, growth-orientated informal enterprises could include domestic and export marketing support, and the facilitation of co-operation between enterprises to encourage improved purchasing and lobbying power. / Thesis (M.T.R.P.)-University of Natal, Durban,1998.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Dev.Studies)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.

The overarching objective of this study was to establish the extent to which the Multi-Fiber Arrangement impacted on the garment industry of the Kingdom of Lesotho. The quota system which controlled access to the world's biggest textile and clothing markets in the United States (US) and European Union (EU) namely Multi-fiber Arrangement (MFA) was incorporated in 1974. Nonetheless, with the thrust towards the increasingly liberal world market, MFA was abolished on 1 January 2005. As a result countries such as Lesotho had to compete on an equal footing with developed countries. Lesotho depends heavily on textile and clothing exports, thus, it is potentially vulnerable to this change in competitiveness. There have been predictions that the garment industry will suffer as a result of quota abolition and spell the end of thousand of jobs. This study was conducted to understand the various implications of Multi-Fibre Arrangement phase out on the Lesotho garment industry. The study first examines the impact of MFA on the economic growth and employment in Lesotho. Then it determines the consequences of MFA phase out on workers and the garment industry, that is, whether this elimination badly affected the industry and workers. Lastly, it establishes if adequate actions or efforts have been undertaken to attenuate potential negative impacts on workers. The results strongly indicate that MFA had contributed enormously to the Lesotho economic growth. The phasing out has led to job losses and disruption in the industry. However, programs have been put in place to mitigate and manage the negative impacts on workers such as providing training to workers with the aim of improving productivity. By the same token, recommendations have been suggested in order to address the impacts, such as to integrate vertically the industry to enhance production times. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2006.

The British market has until now received little of the credit due it as the chief support of the cotton industry during the final fifty years of the eighteenth century. The manner in which this support was extended involved a restructuring of the economy, as illustrated by a qualitative change in the consumer habits of the population; the advent of a mass consumer society. The demand for cotton textiles was a distillation of many amorphous desires and aspirations that flourished in eighteenth century Britain. This was not a frivolous whim on the part of a small host of women, but a powerful economic force which might be tapped through the female section of the society, but which involved the entire society on a fundamental level. When the fashionable urge was translated into a demand for inexpensive, attractive cottons the industry was tied to one of the most potent commercial forces of that period. As a result of recent research, historians are coming to recognize a feature of economic development in the last half of the eighteenth century never before sufficiently acknowledged. This quality in the economic life of the nation set it off from all previous eras. During that time an economy developed and prospered that was geared to the profits of popular fashions, produced cheaply and in quantity for the mass market. Never before had a trade developed so quickly, exclusively on popular demand for mass-produced fashionable textiles. The provision of news on current fashions throughout the nation sparked generalized interest in British manufacturers among the middle and working classes. These classes were the basis of the market on which the cotton. industry depended for its vitality; it was among these sections of society that the creations of the cotton industry found the great new markets of the eighteenth century. Institutionalized dessimination of fashion information in print; a homogeneity of demand throughout the nation and the ranks of the nation; and the diversification and development of cotton products in response to this demand were the principal characteristics of this economic and social phenomenon.