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
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/37966 |
| Date | 05 February 1991 |
| Creators | Ho, Shan-hsin Angie |
| Contributors | Jordan, Cheryl |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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