Fashion Merchandising Research Articles

Research in Fashion Merchandising — The Need for a Theoretical Base

Textiles and clothing instruction and research in the merchandising area have not emphasized theory. This is partly because retailing and marketing, as applied fields, have not stressed basic theory in recent years. Also, there is misunderstanding of the role that theory can play in solving practical problems. Textiles and clothing merchandising researchers need to collect and organize their own theory base. This should be built on root disciplines in the social sciences plus major contributions from business administration, other fields of home economics, and various textiles and clothing areas.

Clothing outshopping in a rural Western community

Statistics reveal that over half of all women are gainfully employed outside the home. Professional working women have a certain status to maintain and it is reasonable to assume that their clothing needs might differ from women who are employed in other occupations and who remain in the home. Recent research has shown that considerable shopping occurs out of the local retail trade area (termed outshopping). Product‐specific outshopping research has revealed clothing to be a product consumers are willing to out‐shop to obtain. Professionally employed women might have to resort to outshopping more often than the other women in order to meet their clothing needs. For this project outshopping was defined to be the percentage of shopping which occurred at least 50 miles from the test site.This research represents the combined efforts of a graduate class studying trends in fashion merchandising; a telephone survey was developed and conducted by the class and responses from 100 female consumers were analysed using multiple step‐wise regression. It was predicted and found that clothing outshopping behaviour could be significantly predicted by the degree of satisfaction with local retailing and number of children remaining in the home. Including the two variables professional/non‐professional working status, and the age of female respondent as predictors, did not significantly improve the ability to predict outshopping behaviour. The implications for retailers are discussed.

Renewed Focus on Learning through Cognitive Learning Styles in Fashion Merchandising Programs

The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive learning styles in a specific field of study—fashion merchandising. The Witkin Group Embedded Figures Test and the Kolb Learning Style Inventory classified 173 fashion merchandising students and six instructors into cognitive learning style categories. The Herold Teaching Strategy Observation Checklist categorized six clothing/textile classes into instructional styles of field independent orfield dependent. Results showed students in the selected field offashion merchandising did have a predominant cognitive learning style; fifty nine percent of the students were field dependent on the Witkin instrument and 44.5% were Divergers on the Kolb inventory. No relationship wasfound between: (1) aparticular cognitive learning style and academic achievement, (2) a match or mismatch ofcognitive learning style ofstudent and instructional setting and student achievement, (3) the Kolb and Witkin instruments in classification of students into learning style categories, nor (4) personal cognitive learning style of teachers and their style of teaching.

INFLUENCE OF CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION ON MEN'S CLOTHING PURCHASES: A CROSS‐GENERATIONAL STUDY

This article presents data from a survey conducted among older and younger men who were members of civic organizations in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Purposes of this study were to determine if older men were different from younger men in their use of channels of communication when making clothing purchasing decisions and in their general shopping practices. The older men were 55 to 78 years of age and the younger men were 27 to 49. The men in both groups held white‐collar jobs, were married, college educated, and had annual incomes in excess of $20,000. Although two significant differences were found between the two groups of men (frequency with which they read specified publications and tones of advertisements that they preferred), the similarities between the two groups were more important than the differences. Similarities and differences between older and younger men are discussed. Implications for educators in business, advertising, and fashion merchandising are presented.

Chemistry I and Clothing, Textiles and Fashion Merchandising Majors

Because the principles learned in a first course in chemistry can be applied to at least some of the chemical problems of the several fields in home economics, students were polled to determine which fields they might like to see related to the principles of the first course in chemistry. Each of six instructors in the department of chemistry then assumed responsibility for relating a section of the first course in chemistry to one such field. The resulting separate sections of the course are called vari ants. The present paper is a description of the variant taught so as to be of special interest to students who expected to major in clothing and textiles or fashion mer chandising. It should be emphasized that the course is still the first semester of chemistry and not a different course although the principles taught in the first semester are shown to be applicable to some of the chemical prob lems found in cellulose fabrics, polymer fabrics, mer cerization, dyeing, flame resist treatments, etc. Only a small amount of necessary organic chemistry is added to the first course. In addition to using chemical problems in the students' field of interest, the course is taught using a devised method termed Concept Transfer whereby difficult concepts are first described in terms of an everyday analogue and then transferred to the analogous chemical system (1). The following are two examples of the use of Concept Transfer. The first deals with the chemical mole or gram molecular weight. In lecture students are shown a cardboard cutout of a doll dress upon which are glued a single small button on each cuff and three larger buttons down the center. The students are told to imagine they have graduated and are employed by a toy manufacturer. The sales depart ment of the firm has indicated that 100,000 doll dresses can be sold. The students are employed in a department

Book Review: Fashion Merchandising. Paul H. Nystrom

Book Review: Fashion Merchandising. Paul H. Nystrom