The thesis is divided into two parts. The firts part deals with theoretical description of fashion merchandising, including specification of visual merchandising, sensoring merchandising and other aspects of shopping environment. The second part is dedicated to description of practical application of those principles in a selected shop of an international fashion retailer.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to identify the technical, interpersonal, and analytical skills essential for managers of chain apparel specialty stores located in regional shopping centers in the Milwaukee Metropolitan Statistical Area. A literature review indicated that there is little specific information available concerning skills needed by chain apparel specialty store managers. In the 1980s, the apparel specialty retail industry was characterized by a number of firms expanding and diversifying their retail holdings and coming to dominate the industry. As a result the industry is composed of national retailers whose decision-making structures are highly centralized. This centralized structure has altered the skills necessary for chain store managers to perform specified job duties. This qualitative study used the nominal group technique (NGT), structured interviews, and a field study to address the research problem. A nominal group method, involving seven store managers, generated a list of 150 essential skills in eight specified job duty categories. This NGT essential skills list provided the framework for subsequent structured interviews with five district managers of chain apparel specialty stores. The store managers and district managers were then asked to priority rank the essential skills list and the lists were analyzed for congruency. The lists were also compared with daily time/activities logs completed by three store managers to determine if they actually used the specified skills. Triangulation was used to permit the researcher to be more confident of the data. The essential technical skills identified by participating chain apparel specialty store managers and district managers include a knowledge of company policies, equipment usage, fashion-related product information, payroll procedures, and theft control. The dominant interpersonal skills were the ability to communicate, train, delegate, and role model specific behaviors for employees. The essential analytical skills include the ability to set high store standards, solve customer and employee problems, determine sales trends, and generate creative promotional ideas. Managers must have a combination of management and leadership skills and be able to "drive the business" with creativity, employee involvement and motivation strategies. / Ed. D.

The purposes of this study were (1) to determine the validity, reliability, and item quality of a program-specific, assessment instrument designed to measure student mastery of core knowledge in the discipline, (2) to evaluate the effectiveness of the instrument for determining student outcomes from the value-added perspective, and (3) to determine whether performance on the instrument and other measures of achievement was affected by student involvement characteristics. The instrument contained 100 multiple-choice items relating to five core courses. For portions of the study, the instrument was divided into five subtests and administered as a pretest on the first day of classes in the five core courses and as a post test on the last day of classes. The instrument in its full form was administered to upper class clothing and textiles majors and to under class clothing and textiles majors. Interviews related to the instrument were conducted with a subset of students who had taken the subtests and the full exam and with faculty who taught the courses. The split-half and the KR-20 reliability estimates for internal consistency of the full test were above .70. The increase in student performance from pretest to posttest and the correlation between information obtained from the interviews with the results of the item analyses demonstrated the instrument's content validity. The significant difference between scores received by upper class majors and scores received by underclass majors on the instrument, and the correlations between course grades with scores on the instrument and final exam grades with scores on the instrument demonstrated the construct validity of the instrument. The ability of the instrument to measure value-added knowledge was ascertained by the increase in student performance from pretest to post test. Further data analyses revealed a pattern regarding factors which affect student achievement. Student involvement in organizations and employment had a positive and negative effect on various measures of student achievement. Although the validity and reliability of the instrument were demonstrated, improvements in item quality and representation of course objectives on the core knowledge exam are needed. / Ph. D.

by Tse Po-shing, Andy. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1991. / Bibliography: leaves 57-59. / EXECUTIVE SUMMARY --- p.i / ACKNOWLEDGEMENT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.iii / LIST OF APPENDICES --- p.iv / CHAPTER / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.2 / Chapter II. --- RESEARCH RATIONALE --- p.3 / Statement of the Program --- p.3 / Programme Strategy --- p.3 / Assumptions and Hypothesis --- p.3 / Target Population --- p.5 / Chapter III. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.6 / Segmentation --- p.6 / Lifestyle --- p.9 / Lifestyle Segmentation --- p.11 / Fashion Research --- p.13 / Chapter IV. --- BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON HONG KONG --- p.16 / Demographics of Hong Kong Females --- p.16 / Hong Kong's Market for Apparel --- p.18 / Lifestyle Study in Hong Kong --- p.20 / Chapter V. --- RESEARCH METHODOLOGY --- p.21 / Sampling Procedure --- p.21 / Instrument --- p.22 / Measures --- p.23 / Chapter VI. --- RESULTS --- p.27 / Factor Analysis --- p.27 / Cluster Analysis --- p.32 / Demographics --- p.33 / Chapter VII. --- DISCUSSION --- p.34 / Cluster I: Followers --- p.34 / Cluster II: Leaders --- p.35 / Cluster III: Realists --- p.36 / Cluster IV: Uninvolved --- p.37 / Chapter VIII. --- CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS --- p.39 / Conclusion --- p.39 / Recommendation --- p.39 / Chapter IX. --- LIMITATION --- p.41 / Chapter X. --- APPENDICES --- p.42 / Chapter XI. --- REFERENCES --- p.57 / LIST OF APPENDICES / Chapter APPENDIX 1: --- English Version Questionnaire --- p.44 / Chapter APPENDIX 2: --- Chinese Version Questionnaire --- p.49 / Chapter APPENDIX 3: --- Figure and Table --- p.52 / Figure 1 --- p.52 / Table 1 --- p.53 / Table 2 --- p.55 / Table 3 --- p.56

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the saleability judgements of retail store buyers of women's and men's wear. A sample of 81 women's and men's wear buyers, representing two specialty stores and one mass merchandiser, was sent questionnaires. Principal Components Factor Analysis with Varimax Rotation was used to reduce the number of product, vendor and information source variables to eight factors. Three significant differences existed between the women's wear and men's wear buyers, verifying that not all retail buyers are alike. Results will benefit educators in preparing students to become more effective buyers, retail management can incorporate this same information into a buyer training program and apparel manufacturers can use the study in planning product strategies to retailers.

Introduction: Entrepreneurial fashion businesses are very important due to the employment, income, products and services they provide. The South African government has identified small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) to address the economic challenges in this country. Entrepreneurship development is a means to economic development, which implies developing an entrepreneurial population. Aim: To acquire an integrated perspective on fashion entrepreneurs, their businesses and the technological environment in which they function, in order to understand the maintaining of a successful fashion business and to offer recommendations for the training and development of potential and existing fashion entrepreneurs. Method: A convenience sample of 100 fashion entrepreneurs in the Vaal Region was selected. A self-administered, structured questionnaire was compiled and used to gather the information. Section A focused on demographic background information, section B investigated entrepreneurial attributes, section C investigated the start-up and functioning of the business and section D concentrated on the technological environment. The instrument was tested for validity and reliability. Results: There were more female than male respondents, which corresponds with recent global statistics. The age distribution of these fashion entrepreneurs was quite balanced between younger, middle and older groups. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents were married, mostly with children aged older than 19 years. The majority of these fashion entrepreneurs had a tertiary qualification, but only a fifth had formal business training while negligibly few had formal training in business management or other business training. Six desirable entrepreneurial attributes were investigated and ranked in the following order: Leadership; Commitment and determination; Motivation to excel; Creativity, self-reliance and ability to adapt; Customer service; Tolerance of risk, ambiguity and uncertainty. All the attributes except the last one were scored quite high. They possessed most required entrepreneurial skills and knowledge, but lacked training in specific areas. Most ran their businesses as a sole career, employing one to four people and relied on the word-of-mouth advertising method. They used computers and information technology to a moderate extent and industrial equipment to a low extent.

M. Tech. (Fashion, Department of Arts and Design, Faculty of Human Sciences): Vaal University of Technology / Criteria used by fashion consumers to assess the quality of apparel products during the decision-making process are a good indication of what considerations to keep in mind for customer satisfaction. Evaluative criteria of concern to apparel customers are intrinsic attributes, involving physical features such as design/style, materials and construction and performance features such as aesthetic and functional aspects and extrinsic attributes such as price, brand, store image, label, country of origin and appropriateness for the occasion, in this case casual day wear. The broad research aim of this exploratory study was to determine which evaluative criteria were used by female fashion consumers in the Vaal Region to determine apparel quality when purchasing casual daywear, and to what extent the various criteria were applied. A self-administered, structured questionnaire was used to collect the data. Sections 1 and 2 measured the importance of intrinsic and extrinsic clothing evaluative criteria. Section 3 investigated the frequency with which the respondents bought casual daywear at various store types, namely specialty, department and discount stores, while section 4 gathered the demographic information of the respondents. A representative sample was chosen from the academic personnel of all seven tertiary institutions in the Vaal Region. The majority of the lecturers (38.00 percent) were between the ages of 31 and 40, which can be described as relatively young, constituting a group sometimes referred to as baby busters or Generation X. Although the predominant population group was white (65.71 percent), a quarter of the respondents were black. They all had a tertiary qualification, indicating a relatively high educational level, and an average income. These espondents were predominantly married, either by orthodox or customary marriage. Regarding the application of evaluative criteria for quality assessment, these respondents used intrinsic apparel attributes to a greater extent than extrinsic attributes. Three functional performance aspects namely durability, comfort and fit were rated equal and most important for judging quality, followed closely by an extrinsic attribute namely appropriateness for casual daywear. Three clusters of respondents could be distinguished, each with a specific disposition towards the evaluative criteria. The most popular store type for clothing was Department stores, followed by Discount and Specialty stores.