No description available.

Service quality defined by the customer is an important element in satisfying customers and may determine retail survival. The SERVQUAL instrument measured desired and minimum expectations and perceptions of service quality in a small apparel specialty store. Factor analysis with varimax rotation resulted in three dimensions of service quality for both desired and minimum levels of expectations and perceptions: (a) Personal Attention, (b) Reliability, and (c) Tangibles. Regression analyses determined the relationship between overall service quality (OSQ) and various predictor variables. Based on gap scores between desired expectations and perceptions, the Personal Attention and Tangibles dimensions were significant in predicting OSQ. SERVQUAL is a managerial tool that small apparel retailers may use to improve service quality.

Detaljhandeln förmodas möta en stor utmaning de kommande åren. Detta då digitaliseringen växer i snabb takt och e-handeln konkurrerar allt mer mot de traditionella butikerna. På grund av den hårdnande konkurrensen är det viktigt att företag tänker nytt och är innovativa. För att bemöta utmaningen menar jag att impulsköp kan anses som en konkurrensfördel för detaljhandelsföretag. Denna studie har därför tagit sin utgångspunkt i detta och belyser just fenomenet impulsköp. Då kvinnan är den som tidigare påvisats utföra flest impulsköp valdes det i studien att fokusera på henne. Syftet var att bidra med en ökad kunskap gällande vilka faktorer som kan påverka när svenska kvinnor impulshandlar. Studiens insamling av empiri bestod av en gruppintervju samt tre enskilda intervjuer. Dessa grundades i en analysmodell som utvecklats från studiens litteraturgenomgång. Sammanfattningsvis var det tre faktorer ur studiens analysmodell som kunde påvisas vara påverkande vid impulsköp. Dessa var shoppingmiljö, erbjudande och sällskap. Även merförsäljning och ålder har påvisats kunna vara betydande för impulsköp. / Retail business is expected to face a major challenge in the coming years. This is because digitalization is growing rapidly, and e-commerce is increasingly competing against traditional stores. It requires innovative thinking of companies to be competitive. To meet the challenge, I mean that impulse purchases can be used as a competitive advantage for retail companies. This study has therefore taken its starting point in the phenomenon impulse purchases. The study focuses on a female perspective since women are more inclined to execute impulse purchases. The purpose was to contribute to increased knowledge of the factors that may be crucial when Swedish women do impulse purchases. The study's empirical gathering consisted of a group interview and three individual interviews. These interviews were based on an analysis model developed by the study's literature review. In summary, three factors from the study's analysis model that could be shown to be influential in impulse purchases . These are shopping environments, offers and companies while shopping. Even additional sale and age have been shown to be significant for impulse purchases.

The purpose of this study was to find the main drivers of brand avoidance behavior among Chinese female's cosmetics consumers. Based on Lee et al. (2009) and Knittel et al. (2016) model to do the research. Research was conducted based on existing literature. The results show that Chinese female consumers have common driving force in brand avoidance behavior, namely political positioning and animal test in moral avoidance. According to the existing theoretical framework, the cultural differences are used to create a brand avoidance model to suit Chinese female consumers.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between American consumersand “Environmentally and Ethically Sustainable Fashion” (EESF), with a specific focus on African-American female consumers in order to discover how relevant EESF is in their lifestyles and fashionconsumption practices. Additionally, the study aims to investigate if African-American femaleconsumers are being overlooked in the discourse surrounding EESF.Methodology: The research was qualitative with an inductive approach. A survey was conductedelectronically in order to collect data, and was designed using research collected from literature,scientific articles and online resources. Using the method of snowball sampling, respondents weregathered from a pool of my cohorts, who further distributed the survey on to their contacts.Findings: The findings suggest that African-American female consumers are aware and haveknowledge of EESF, however EESF is not relevant in their lifestyles and fashion consumptionroutines. The literature review which was conducted prior to collecting the data indicates that African-American female consumers are being overlooked in the discourse surrounding EESF and theconcepts surrounding it.Contributions: The findings in this study have managerial implications which will prompt thescientific community, governments, organizations and apparel brands to further study this group ofconsumers in order to assess better ways to reach them in ways that are relevant to their lifestyles andfashion consumption practices. The study also contributes to the existing literature about the consumerbehavior and fashion consumption practices of African-American women.

The applications of mobile phone provide limitless convenience to people¡¦s life. 3G mobile phone provides a great contribution to communications due to wide range bandwidth. 3G mobile phone is able to economize on communicating time and space. Therefore, it plays an important role in the currently mobile market. In addition the governments have devoted much resource on 3G mobile learning as the hardware and software. The study aims to examine the female consumers of 3G mobile phone and consider the market of mobile phone industry, mobile phone technology and further development of mobile phone. Related literatures are sourced from the develop background of the current mobile market, demand of the mobile phone market and consumer characteristics in order to filter out the priority setting of those six categories as follows: network connection, hardware design, safe internet, business model and the mobile service of convenient and appreciations. Beside this, it also presents that the priority setting might change as a matter of time. Research method is Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In the project, questionnaire results provide the bulk of the data, with the interviews intended to provide a more contextual element to the work. The questionnaire was developed and sent out to female consumers of 3G mobile phone; and the interviews were carried out with some professors of 3G mobile leaning. The results of this study suggested that the main female consumers of 3G mobile phone are young ladies who have higher education and these consumers need to receive a lot of information to help them handle works. In addition it can help them to develop the commutations. In other words, 3G mobile phone can bring more convenient in life and work. Meanwhile, the key point to promote the 3G mobile phone is the service of applications; especially the service refers to the characteristics of 3G mobile phone. For female consumers, service design should focus on female characteristics of life and special demands. For example, the service of fixing and tracking design is better for married women who have children; the service of providing life information is suit for young business ladies. After developing the service of applications, users will be used to 3G mobile phone. Then, it could be successful to expand the 3G mobile phone market of the female consumers.

Problem: Research shows that it is crucial to acknowledge the information search step to understand consumer decision-making. Moreover, consumers‟ buying behavior is affected by their brand awareness. A problem is however that there exist a gap in previous research on understanding the consumers‟ actual behavior and why they choose certain platforms for their information gathering. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to get an understanding of consumers‟ information gathering process about cosmetic products and in turn to what extent that can create brand- awareness and attitudes. The thesis aims at filling the gap of truly understanding consumers inter-action in media and their behavior. The target audience to be stud-ied is young women, age 18-26, in the cosmetic industry. The inten-tion is to take an exploratory research view and to understand how this group of customers behave and also to describe why that is the reason. Methodology: To meet the purpose of the thesis, a qualitative research design was chosen since it allows the participants to express their opinions, re-flections and feelings as well as truly understanding the target in the way it enables deeper discussions. Three focus groups were con-ducted with young female consumers, and one in-depth interview was held with the partner company The Body Shop. The data was color-coded and presented separately in the result section, so that every participant‟s opinion was visible, before combining the results with theoretical reasoning in the analysis section. Conclusion: This study shows that young female consumers spend most of their information search on Instagram and Youtube since it is quick, fun and give inspiration, but they also value recommendations from friends. On all platforms they highly value a feeling of personal rela-tionships. Regarding brand- awareness and attitudes, it was found that brands are for the most part very important for the young fe-male consumers and they learn about brands both in their infor-mation search online and offline when talking to friends or visiting stores.

Background and motivation Clothing labels concern the permanently attached labels as well as the temporarily attached labels known as hangtags that are found on clothing products. Clothing labels assist consumers when they are deciding whether or not to purchase clothing products, by providing product information and potential care instructions. Clothing labels are made up of two attributes, namely the physical nature of clothing labels in addition to the information on clothing labels. Adequate knowledge, positive perceptions and optimal use of clothing labels may result in satisfied consumers who make responsible and informed purchases. The aim of this study was subsequently, to determine male and female consumers’ knowledge, perceptions and use of clothing labels. The provision of clothing labels does not guarantee that consumers will read, understand or apply the information on clothing labels. Therefore this research is based on retailers’ assumption that the provision of informative clothing labels is sufficient to encourage the usage thereof and that all consumers understand and perceive the clothing labels as intended. Due to the lack of research that exists in South Africa in the field of clothing labels, it is not known whether consumers have adequate knowledge and positive perceptions of clothing labels and the information on them, and whether they use the labels optimally. Methodology The research design of this study was non–experimental, quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive. Questionnaires were used as the measuring instrument to collect the data. The study population included all the consumers in three municipalities in the North–West Province above the age of 18 years, male as well as female, who can read and who had purchased a clothing product some time from one of the selected stores. Data collection was undertaken in the Bonjana, Platinum and Southern district municipalities, which included, Rustenburg, Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom. A total of 304 usable questionnaires were obtained. Results and discussion On average 71% of the respondents had adequate knowledge of the information presented on clothing labels (excluding the care instructions) and 65.6% had adequate knowledge regarding the care instructions. Respondents perceived colours in general (79.9%), letter size (83%) and readability (77.7%) of information on clothing labels as positive. They found it very important that the information on clothing labels will not fade (68.8%), and that the positioning remains constant (78.8%), in addition to not showing (84.9%). Respondents perceived the indication of information on clothing as positive, regarding the fibre content (84.2%), country of origin (61.2%), size indication (89.5%) as well as additional information, such as applied special finishes (76.4%) and indication of eco friendly clothing (69.5%) and licensed trade marks (78%). Respondents sufficiently made use of the care instructions in words (68.1%) and symbols (63.2%) when purchasing similar items. More than half (56.9%) of the respondents used the indication of special finishes applied to clothing during the pre– and post purchasing phase. The indication of eco friendly clothing was used by the respondents (51%) for future reference and 63.5% made use of the licensed trademarks when purchasing similar products. In conclusion the results generally indicated that the respondents had adequate knowledge and positive perceptions of clothing labels, and made use of clothing labels before, during and after purchasing clothing products. Furthermore only small significant differences were found between male and female respondents’ knowledge, perceptions and use of clothing labels. It was established that relationships do exist between respondents’ knowledge, perceptions and use of clothing labels. / Thesis (M. Consumer Science)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Background and motivation Clothing labels concern the permanently attached labels as well as the temporarily attached labels known as hangtags that are found on clothing products. Clothing labels assist consumers when they are deciding whether or not to purchase clothing products, by providing product information and potential care instructions. Clothing labels are made up of two attributes, namely the physical nature of clothing labels in addition to the information on clothing labels. Adequate knowledge, positive perceptions and optimal use of clothing labels may result in satisfied consumers who make responsible and informed purchases. The aim of this study was subsequently, to determine male and female consumers’ knowledge, perceptions and use of clothing labels. The provision of clothing labels does not guarantee that consumers will read, understand or apply the information on clothing labels. Therefore this research is based on retailers’ assumption that the provision of informative clothing labels is sufficient to encourage the usage thereof and that all consumers understand and perceive the clothing labels as intended. Due to the lack of research that exists in South Africa in the field of clothing labels, it is not known whether consumers have adequate knowledge and positive perceptions of clothing labels and the information on them, and whether they use the labels optimally. Methodology The research design of this study was non–experimental, quantitative, exploratory, and descriptive. Questionnaires were used as the measuring instrument to collect the data. The study population included all the consumers in three municipalities in the North–West Province above the age of 18 years, male as well as female, who can read and who had purchased a clothing product some time from one of the selected stores. Data collection was undertaken in the Bonjana, Platinum and Southern district municipalities, which included, Rustenburg, Klerksdorp and Potchefstroom. A total of 304 usable questionnaires were obtained. Results and discussion On average 71% of the respondents had adequate knowledge of the information presented on clothing labels (excluding the care instructions) and 65.6% had adequate knowledge regarding the care instructions. Respondents perceived colours in general (79.9%), letter size (83%) and readability (77.7%) of information on clothing labels as positive. They found it very important that the information on clothing labels will not fade (68.8%), and that the positioning remains constant (78.8%), in addition to not showing (84.9%). Respondents perceived the indication of information on clothing as positive, regarding the fibre content (84.2%), country of origin (61.2%), size indication (89.5%) as well as additional information, such as applied special finishes (76.4%) and indication of eco friendly clothing (69.5%) and licensed trade marks (78%). Respondents sufficiently made use of the care instructions in words (68.1%) and symbols (63.2%) when purchasing similar items. More than half (56.9%) of the respondents used the indication of special finishes applied to clothing during the pre– and post purchasing phase. The indication of eco friendly clothing was used by the respondents (51%) for future reference and 63.5% made use of the licensed trademarks when purchasing similar products. In conclusion the results generally indicated that the respondents had adequate knowledge and positive perceptions of clothing labels, and made use of clothing labels before, during and after purchasing clothing products. Furthermore only small significant differences were found between male and female respondents’ knowledge, perceptions and use of clothing labels. It was established that relationships do exist between respondents’ knowledge, perceptions and use of clothing labels. / Thesis (M. Consumer Science)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Consumers now more than ever are concerned by a teeming pool of social and cultural powers-Social Media Influencers (SMI)-that influence their purchasing decisions. Fashion as one of the most extensive industries in the world has spurred the rise of fashion SMIs on Instagram. As such , identifying that previous literature has studied female and male consumers jointly, this thesis thus, by employing a psycho-social methodological approach and a Consumer Culture theory perspective, takes a rather explorative modus operandi in trying to understand the perception of Swedish female consumer toward fashion SMIs while identifying the factor related to fashion SMIs that contour Swedish female consumers perceptions and facilitate purchasing decisions. Some of the findings are 1) fashion SMIs that are always presenting their perfect self are considered mischievous, 2) fashion SMIs consumers to discover their true selves, 3) fashion SMIs expertise is highly valued when seen outside a collaboration, 4) fashion SMIs trustworthiness is enhanced when they also present the flaws of their lives,5)consumers are rational buyers and regardless of the great influence of fashion SMIs, they finalize their purchasing decisions based on their needs, product attributes, and opinions received from friends and family.