Importance of Extrinsic Quality Assessment Criteria when South African Female Consumers Evaluate Casual Daywear

Abstract

To gain competitive advantage, marketers must make sure that they meet consumers’ needs and demands, to guarantee their satisfaction. It is therefore crucial that marketers will know to what extent their apparel customers apply evaluative criteria to assess clothing quality. The aim of this study was to determine the importance of extrinsic evaluative criteria used by female fashion consumers in the Vaal Region to assess apparel quality when purchasing casual daywear. For this quantitative study a self-administered, structured, validated questionnaire was developed to test how important the female lecturers at the Vaal University of Technology (in the North-West Province in South Africa) deemed six extrinsic evaluative criteria when purchasing casual daywear. Mean scores showed that appropriateness of the garments for a specific purpose was rated most important, followed by price and labels. Store image was rated in the fourth place, while brand and country of origin were rated much lower than all the other attributes. It was concluded that apparel manufacturers and retailers should take note of the outcomes of this study in order to understand consumers’ selection criteria when purchasing apparel. In-depth information on apparel consumer preferences could help retailers to plan their merchandise mix more efficiently, to identify niche markets and to develop targeting strategies for the various markets. Retailers could, in co-operation with consumer educational authorities, develop educational opportunities during which consumers could be made aware of the importance of using a wide variety of applicable evaluative criteria in order to make informed and responsible apparel purchase decisions. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p2133