Fitting Room Research Articles

Tendency to Use the Virtual Fitting Room in Generation Y - Results of Qualitative Study

Abstract E-commerce is growing rapidly on a global scale. Among many products purchased via the Internet, clothing is the first in terms of purchase frequency. However, there are growth barriers for this product category, which include, first of all, the client’s fear of matching clothing to their own figure or complexion. This results in a high percentage of returns reaching up to 60% of transactions, which is more than that in other e-commerce sectors. One of the possible solutions to the abovementioned problem is the use of a virtual fitting room (VFR), which allows you to try on clothes in terms of size, fit, style, or color on a computer or smartphone screen. The main purpose of the article is to determine the propensity to use a VFR in the age group of generation Y. The second goal is to compare the propensity to use by type of VFR: 2D vs. 3D. The methodology is based on the qualitative exploratory approach. To conduct research, content analysis and sentiment analysis were used. The results of the study indicate that the participants of the research have an ambivalent attitude towards VFR – on the one hand, they perceive VFRs as an interesting solution for Internet users (not only generation Y). On the other hand, however, they themselves show a distance to use the VFR. The analysis also showed that a two-dimensional type of VFR based on augmented reality technology has greater market opportunities.

The smartness paradox: the moderating effect of brand quality reputation on consumers' reactions to RFID-based smart fitting rooms

With the growing prevalence among retailers to create a unique shopping experience, RFID-based smart fitting rooms are gaining popularity. These RFID-based smart fitting rooms tend to gather consumer data for a better personalized experience. Drawing from cue congruity and cue scope literature, this research explores the impact of RFID-based smart fitting rooms on consumer perceptions of the shopping experience, privacy, and purchase intentions. Results from two studies indicate that RFID-based smart fitting rooms will only have a positive effect for brands with high-quality reputations. However, in the presence of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data security disclosure, consumers react favorably towards RFID-based smart fitting rooms regardless of brand quality reputation. The findings indicate that perceived shopping satisfaction and perceived privacy will mediate these effects on purchase intention. The authors discuss implications of the findings, especially about the effective reach of RFID-based smart fitting rooms for brands with varying quality reputations.

Auditory Training in an Elderly Hearing Aid User Using Environmental Sounds, Stories and Questions: A Case Report

We have reported one case of improvement in word recognition score (WRS) and sentence recognition score (SRS) in an elderly hearing aid user who had difficulty in communicating with others even after having a hearing aid fitted. Six weeks of training was conducted using environmental sounds, stories, and questions. Auditory training was conducted twice a week in hearing aid fitting room and total training time in each session was 40 minutes, including checking hearing aids, pre-training counseling, auditory training, and post-training counseling. After three weeks of auditory training, the WRSs of the left and right ear with headphone were changed 28% to 48% and 28% to 40%, respectively. After six weeks of training, SRSs in the acoustic room were improved 47.5% to 77.5% with hearing aids on both sides. And the Korean version of profile of hearing aid benefit scores after six weeks of training were 15.3% for easy communication, 62.3% for background noise, 34.3% for aversiveness, and 50.0% for localization except reverberation situation. This study showed that an elderly hearing aid user has improved communication skills, despite the short period of training. In addition, various training tools and methods are required to ensure that the subject does not lose interest in auditory training, and if the duration and place for the auditory training are limited, a training application on a personal computer or smartphone may facilitate auditory training. Key Words: Auditory training, Environmental sound, Story and question, Neuroplasticity, Hearing loss 중심 단어: ì²­ëŠ¥í›ˆë ¨, 환경음, 이야기 답변, ì‹ ê²½ê°€ì†Œì„±, 난청

Overall Design of Intelligent Wardrobe System

Functional design of the smart wardrobe. At present, some online shopping has been able to achieve a simple virtual fitting, such as Taobao's fitting room, QQ show, fitting nets and so on. Dressing network also provides a show with features, providing a brand with Selfie with the fitting with three modules, but it is clear that the fitting network with the trial focus on the function of the show in the show, and the proposed fashion consultant Service is completely different.

Privacy in Location-Sensing Technologies

Data analysis is becoming a popular tool to gain marketing insights from heterogeneous and often unstructured sensor data. Online stores make use of click stream analysis to understand customer intentions. Meanwhile, retail companies transition to locating technologies like RFID to gain better control and visibility of the inventory in a store. To further exploit the potential of these technologies, retail companies invest in novel services for their customers, such as smart fitting rooms or location of items in real time. In such a setting, a company can not only get insights similar to online stores, but can potentially also monitor customers. In this chapter, we discuss various location-sensing technologies used in retail and identify possible direct and indirect privacy threats that arise with their use. Subsequently, we present technological and organisational privacy controls that can help to minimize the identified privacy threats without losing on relevant marketing insights.

Data-Driven 3-D Human Body Customization With a Mobile Device

It is more convincing for users to have their own 3-D body shapes in the virtual fitting room when they shop clothes online. However, existing methods are limited for ordinary users to efficiently and conveniently access their 3-D bodies. We propose an efficient data-driven approach and develop an android application for 3-D body customization. Users stand naturally and their photos are taken from front and side views with a handy phone camera. They can wear casual clothes like a short-sleeved/long-sleeved shirt and short/long pants. First, we develop a user-friendly interface to semi-automatically segment the human body from photos. Then, the segmented human contours are scaled and translated to the ones under our virtual camera configurations. Through this way, we only need one camera to take photos of human in two views and do not need to calibrate the camera, which satisfy the convenience requirement. Finally, we learn body parameters that determine the 3-D body from dressed-human silhouettes with cascaded regressors. The regressors are trained using a database containing 3-D naked and dressed body pairs. Body parameters regression only costs 1.26 s on an android phone, which ensures the efficiency of our method. We invited 12 volunteers for tests, and the mean absolute estimation error for chest/waist/hip size is 2.89/1.93/2.22 centimeters. We additionally use 637 synthetic data to evaluate the main procedures of our approach.

Tracking customer behaviour in fashion retail using RFID

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how tracking of products by the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology may describe customer behaviour in real-time.Design/methodology/approachThe study was conducted as a field experiment, where a commercially available RFID platform was deployed in the fitting rooms of a fashion retail store.FindingsThe study demonstrates an application of in-store RFID tracking to describe customer behaviour, and some practical challenges of utilising such technology. An example typology of four fitting room traits was constructed based on the data collected.Practical implicationsDifferent customer types most likely require and respond differently to attention from the personnel operating the fitting room area. By identifying customer behaviour in real-time, it is possible to deliver “best practice” shop stewardship and create a more personalised retail experience.Originality/valueThe study is based on real-life retail settings, rather than anecdotal management observations or economic and demographic indicators. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, few contributions combine RFID and consumer behaviour outside conceptual work or laboratory experiments.

Privacy Preserving Cloth Try-On Using Mobile Augmented Reality

Virtual try-on applications make it possible for buyers to watch themselves wearing different garments without physically trying on them. The prevailing approach for virtual try-on has been based on virtual fitting rooms, in which several cameras are used to identify the skeleton and posture of a user in order to render a garment on the user's image. Although this approach has been implemented successfully using different techniques, the privacy of users can be compromised as some users might be reluctant to stand in front of cameras in a fitting room. This paper proposes an alternative approach that allows a customer to watch a three-dimensional (3D) model of her/him wearing garments on a personal mobile device using augmented reality (AR). Among 3D human models that are automatically generated, a model selection technique is proposed that makes it possible to find the right size model representing the anthropometric features of the user. This approach is accompanied by body customization and face generation modules to generate a realistic representation. Several quantitative experiments as well as user studies were performed to evaluate the accuracy, efficiency, usefulness, and privacy of the proposed technique.

Modelling Reactive and Proactive Behaviour in Simulation

This research investigated the simulation model behaviour of a traditional and combined discrete event as well as agent based simulation models when modelling human reactive and proactive behaviour in human centric complex systems. A departmental store was chosen as human centric complex case study where the operation system of a fitting room in WomensWear department was investigated. We have looked at ways to determine the efficiency of new management policies for the fitting room operation through simulating the reactive and proactive behaviour of staff towards customers. Once development of the simulation models and their verification had been done, we carried out a validation experiment in the form of a sensitivity analysis. Subsequently, we executed a statistical analysis where the mixed reactive and proactive behaviour experimental results were compared with some reactive experimental results from previously published works. Generally, this case study discovered that simple proactive individual behaviour could be modelled in both simulation models. In addition, we found the traditional discrete event model performed similar in the simulation model output compared to the combined discrete event and agent based simulation when modelling similar human behaviour.

Effect of the fitting room environment on older clothing shoppers

Given the age-related physical challenges and social needs of older consumers, a randomized field experiment with 72 females aged 65+ was conducted using fitting room areas of two stores that varied in levels of Universal Design features and service. Based on ANCOVA, the fitting room area accommodation level had a significant effect on physical environment and social environment psychic costs and shopping satisfaction. Multiple regression confirmed the interaction effect of competence level and accommodation level on psychic costs and that psychic costs affected shopping satisfaction. Satisfaction influenced patronage intentions. The importance of the fitting room area should not be underestimated.

Automatic garment retexturing based on infrared information

This paper introduces a new automatic technique for garment retexturing using a single static image along with the depth and infrared information obtained using the Microsoft Kinect II as the RGB-D acquisition device. First, the garment is segmented out from the image using either the Breadth-First Search algorithm or the semi-automatic procedure provided by the GrabCut method. Then texture domain coordinates are computed for each pixel belonging to the garment using normalised 3D information. Afterwards, shading is applied to the new colours from the texture image. As the main contribution of the proposed method, the latter information is obtained based on extracting a linear map transforming the colour present on the infrared image to that of the RGB colour channels. One of the most important impacts of this strategy is that the resulting retexturing algorithm is colour-, pattern- and lighting-invariant. The experimental results show that it can be used to produce realistic representations, which is substantiated through implementing it under various experimentation scenarios, involving varying lighting intensities and directions. Successful results are accomplished also on video sequences, as well as on images of subjects taking different poses. Based on the Mean Opinion Score analysis conducted on many randomly chosen users, it has been shown to produce more realistic-looking results compared to the existing state-of-the-art methods suggested in the literature. From a wide perspective, the proposed method can be used for retexturing all sorts of segmented surfaces, although the focus of this study is on garment retexturing, and the investigation of the configurations is steered accordingly, since the experiments target an application in the context of virtual fitting rooms.

Consumers’ evaluations of fitting rooms in retail clothing stores

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the effect of age, gender and educational level on customer evaluations of the design characteristics of fitting rooms/dressing rooms, such as size, levels of illumination, number of hangers, materials and opening types of doors in retail clothing stores. In the light of these results, the study aims to increase the satisfaction of the customers in retail stores.Design/methodology/approach– These evaluations were analysed according to the demographic characteristics of consumers, such as age, gender and educational level. Since activities in fitting rooms require a certain level of privacy, the features that affected privacy were also considered in this study. The analysis was carried out with research designed for users of fitting rooms in Ankara, Turkey.Findings– Results indicated that demographic characteristics of the customers affected their evaluation of fitting rooms. The statistically significant results between evaluations of customers and their demographic backgrounds were determined. In these analyses, problems emerged due to usage of fitting rooms. Most of the problems complained about were an insufficient number of hangers, lack of mirrors, lack of sitting units, small-sized rooms and poorly illuminated rooms. Moreover, the results showed that customers preferred a totally closed panel door for privacy.Originality/value– This paper reveals a significant relationship between design characteristics of fitting rooms and customer evaluations of fitting rooms. The results of the study suggest that retailers and designers may be able to easily make stores more attractive for customers when installing fitting rooms.

Changing the face of retail: Where fashion meets technology

Prior to the introduction of mobile technologies and the internet, the manual system of going to a brick-and-mortar store to buy clothing was boring and tiresome as customers would spend hours moving from shop to shop trying to find the exact type of outfit they are looking for. The assimilation of technology in fashion designing and online marketing of clothing is marking an incredible venture in the fashion industry. Due to improved security features of online purchasing a lot of people now prefer buying clothing online since it saves time and online shopping provides variety at a click. This paper reviews several ways in which technology is transforming the fashion industry. However this subject has not been researched in detail therefore there is a missing gap in the literature. We hope that this paper will fill the gap in the literature in order to review the role that technology is playing in the fashion industry. Information provided in this paper is beneficial to fashion designers, entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, information technology specialists as well as other researchers interested in a similar area of study.Keywords: Technology, fashion, virtual fitting room, wearable technology, virtual wardrobe.

Changing the face of retail: Where fashion meets technology

Prior to the introduction of mobile technologies and the internet, the manual system of going to a brick-and-mortar store to buy clothing was boring and tiresome as customers would spend hours moving from shop to shop trying to find the exact type of outfit they are looking for. The assimilation of technology in fashion designing and online marketing of clothing is marking an incredible venture in the fashion industry. Due to improved security features of online purchasing a lot of people now prefer buying clothing online since it saves time and online shopping provides variety at a click. This paper reviews several ways in which technology is transforming the fashion industry. However this subject has not been researched in detail therefore there is a missing gap in the literature. We hope that this paper will fill the gap in the literature in order to review the role that technology is playing in the fashion industry. Information provided in this paper is beneficial to fashion designers, entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, information technology specialists as well as other researchers interested in a similar area of study. Keywords: Technology, fashion, virtual fitting room, wearable technology, virtual wardrobe.

Changing the face of retail: Where fashion meets technology

Prior to the introduction of mobile technologies and the internet, the manual system of going to a brick-and-mortar store to buy clothing was boring and tiresome as customers would spend hours moving from shop to shop trying to find the exact type of outfit they are looking for. The assimilation of technology in fashion designing and online marketing of clothing is marking an incredible venture in the fashion industry. Due to improved security features of online purchasing a lot of people now prefer buying clothing online since it saves time and online shopping provides variety at a click. This paper reviews several ways in which technology is transforming the fashion industry. However this subject has not been researched in detail therefore there is a missing gap in the literature. We hope that this paper will fill the gap in the literature in order to review the role that technology is playing in the fashion industry. Information provided in this paper is beneficial to fashion designers, entrepreneurs in the fashion industry, information technology specialists as well as other researchers interested in a similar area of study.Keywords: Technology, fashion, virtual fitting room, wearable technology, virtual wardrobe.

Application of human body movements on the avatars model for the purpose of virtual training system

Abstract This paper deals with particular issues in detection of human body’s movement using contactless sensor and consecutive application of recorded data on avatars model.We aimed at applying transformations to the skeleton model and skin of the avatar. Initial stages include choice of proper sensor and appropriate methods for transformation description. A semi-immersive virtual reality training system in the form of a fitting room has been chosen as a particular implementation of the body movement detection and application. The fitting room was selected because of its entertaining nature and a potential to be used as a training system for handicapped people with movement impairments.

Double Difference Motion Detection and Its Application for Madura Batik Virtual Fitting Room

Madura Batik Virtual Fitting Room using double difference algorithms motion detection is proposed in this research. This virtual fitting room consists of three main stages, i.e. motion detection, determination of region of interest of the detected motion, superimposed the virtual clothes into the region of interest. The double difference algorithm is used for the motion detection stage, since in this algorithm, the empty frame as the reference frame is not required. The double difference algorithm uses the previous and next frame to detect the motion in the current frame. Perception Test Images Sequences Dataset are used as the data of the experiment to measure the performance accuracy of this algorithm before the algorithm is used for the Madura batik virtual fitting room. The accuracy is 57.31%, 99.71%, and 78.52% for the sensitivity, specificity, and balanced accuracy, respectively. The build Madura batik virtual fitting room in this research can be used as the added feature of the Madura batik online stores, hence the consumer is able to see whether the clothes is fitted to them or not, and this virtual fitting room is also can be used as the promotion of Madura batik broadly.

Topical collection editor’s note: Innovations in teaching and industry practices

The topical collection of Fashion and Textiles is a result of 2014 KSCT-ITAA Joint Symposium which took place at the ITAA Annual Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. The theme of the joint symposium was The Culture of Collaborations: New Directions in Clothing and Textiles Teaching and Research, and over fifty papers were presented at the conference. Session 1 included presentations on Curriculum, Undergraduate Programs, and Industry Relations, and Session 2 included research presentations on Innovative Research/Creative Activity in Clothing and Textiles. Authors of the presented papers were invited to submit their manuscripts to the Topical Collection of Fashion and Textiles. One out of the four articles in this collection (Ha-Brookshire), was originally presented in Session 1 and the other three were presented in Session 2: one in the field of consumer behavior (Yun, Jung, and Choo) and two in the field of product development (Kim; Sang and Park). The articles suggest directions for innovations in teaching and practices, thus the topical collection was titled Innovations in Teaching and Industry Practices. Ha-Brookshire’s article, “Global Sourcing: New Research and Education Agendas for Apparel Design and Merchandising” is a concept paper that proposes new research and educational agendas. The author reviews the role of global sourcing in the industry and education, and explores the relationship between apparel design or apparel merchandising and global sourcing. The author asserts that global sourcing may serve as a connector that links between the conventionally divided two major tracks in apparel industry: apparel design and apparel merchandising. The research article by Yun, Jung, and Choo explores shopper experience in fitting rooms in the specialty retailers of private label apparel (SPA) stores using grounded theory method. They focused on the fact that the fitting rooms of SPA stores, which is a relatively new type of retailer, provide shoppers unobstructed opportunities in that these stores usually provide larger number of fitting rooms which are less controlled compared to conventional apparel stores. The article describes the activities that shoppers perform in the fitting rooms in detail, as well as the contextual and intervening conditions of such activities. According to the authors, in the fitting rooms in SPA stores, shoppers engage in activities beyond just checking out the fit of the selected garments. The fitting rooms liberate shoppers to experiment with the abundant products, enjoying different images the garments allow them to create, and also obtain fashion information from observing other shoppers in line. Open Access

Consumer experiences in fitting rooms in SPA stores

AbstractThis study explores fashion consumers’ experiences and behaviors in the fitting room, and tries to understand what their behavior means. The research design is based on the grounded theory and the research question is “What do fashion consumers experience in fitting rooms in SPA stores?” Customers carry out four major actions when using fitting rooms in SPA stores. Firstly, they inspect the physical and aesthetic aspects of the clothing items. Secondly, purchase decision of an item in consideration of its function and price, and the advice of the people who accompany them or friends via social networking sites are processed. Thirdly, consumers are simply enjoying trying them on as a form of entertainment. Fourthly, consumers explore other shopper’ choices when they are waiting in long line to use the fitting room. Then, “enjoying trying on clothes” and the conditions affect it were identified. The pleasure of trying on clothes can be experienced more readily when the reason for shopping is simply leisure, or when the spacious store, wide variety of products, the liberal and independent atmosphere in the fitting room are provided. In this context, participants regarded advice from sales assistants as rather burdensome.

The Impact of visual fashion communication methods on the consumer

The fashion visual communication methods play an important role in identifying the customers’ opinions and response towards clothes and fashion, as the visual communication methods send a quick and short message to the targeted customers and inform those customers with the new trends and models in order to stimulate their response. This research sheds the light on the fact that displaying fashion products and communicating with the customers in Egypt are limited and do not cope with the scientific and technological development of the displaying field, thus this research stresses on the importance of using the best methods of technology and communication as they can affect positively the customers’ decision in Egypt. The importance of this research lies in its attempt to make use of the different types of communication methods to reach the customers in Egypt raising the fashion products sales levels. The research’s subject was handled through following a descriptive method by learning ways of visual communication methods of fashion, this can be done through displaying products: inside the stores, in the outside display windows, the virtual fitting rooms, interactive windows, fashion magazines, fashion catalogues, conventional and hologram fashion shows, the fashion companies’ websites, and the brands’ social network pages aiming at showing the fashion products and connecting with the customer. The research states these ways and its varieties, whilesetting some examples attached to them surveys presented to the customers as well as the companies owners, this to priorities the products to be displayed and the best and easiest ways to communicate with the customers, as well as stating the importance of the visual communication methods of marketing fashion designs in Egypt. The results of the questionnaire conducted about the best visual means of fashion communication to consumers and companies owners are as follow; the consumer's first priority is the commercial shop where he uses all his senses; he sees and touches and even smells the product. Company owners point out that consumers, especially the youth, prefer technological advancements such as interactive screens, virtual fitting rooms, interactive mirrors, and holographic fashion shows, These are not commonly available in Egypt because of high cost. The youth themselves prefer adventure games, and brands' website. Word of the mouth and virtual fitting rooms are what companies owners prefer most due to the great influence expected on a consumer's decision. Information technology facilitates the availability of several interaction and communication systems. Use and manipulating of information technology increases awareness and provide knowledge on different designs of brands and their designers. Consequently, this broadens the range of a consumer's vision and choices, means it isn't deployable. Moreover, this creates a need within a consumer to increase his interaction and consumption. Interactivity represents a transition from the conventional idea of communication as an element to the concept of event in which the values given to behavior, dynamic action, offered services, environment or surroundings become more significant. Fashion visual communication through interactive methods aims at probing users' reactions and desires, and making them an integral part of products designing program. The researcher comes to a conclusion that the positive impact of various means of visual communication on marketing fashion designs in the Arab Republic of Egypt can be summed up in pleasing consumers, and making them have a great desire during browsing and trying clothes on. This is what increases consumers' joy, and affects their purchasing decisions, and consequently sales will increase, and consumers will receive the message in more than one way. Moreover, diversity and difference of visual means of fashion communication, especially the technological ones, raises a consumer's awareness of the brand, highlight its appearance in his mind, and increases his loyalty toward it, and this raises, of course, the value of the brand.