Garment quality evaluation: influence of fashion leadership, fashion involvement, and gender

Abstract

How consumers evaluate garment quality affects consumers’ decision-making, hence it is imperative to study how consumers evaluate quality. The purpose of the study was to contribute to a better understanding of how consumers evaluate garments and how variables such as fashion leadership, fashion involvement, and gender influence garment evaluation. Participants were 309 students from two Midwestern universities. A convenient stratified sample was used. The Garment Quality Evaluation Scale (GQES) was used to measure garment quality, the measure of fashion innovativeness and opinion leadership was used to subdivide participants into fashion leaders and fashion followers, and the Fashion Clothing Involvement Scale was used to divide participants into high and low fashion-involved consumers. MANOVA (multivariate analysis of variance) and ANOVA (analysis of variance) results indicated that how consumers evaluated garment quality was significantly influenced by fashion leadership, fashion involvement, and gender. This study makes an important contribution in understanding garment quality evaluation by consumers.