A Study on a Clothing Purchase Process Model Using Images of Clothing Merchandise

의류상품 이미지에 의한 의복구매과정 모형 연구

It was assumed that a consumer forms images of all the factors related to clothing merchandise such as trademarks, stores, products and prices that he/she perceives in the market and those images deforming his/her preference for a particular piece of clothes and intention of purchase. Under this assumption, this research was designed to find out important factors of clothes that help a consumer form an image of the clothes, among other attributes of the merchandise, and how this image is related to the existing extraneous variables such as the trademark image, the consumer's self image, the price, etc. in leading the consumer to purchase the particular clothes in the end. In the empirical research, a preliminary survey was conducted to select brands of womenswear that were suitable for this study and as the result, 16 brands were chosen. Then one trademark, one store and two products from each of the 16 brands were selected. With these materials, 32 stimulus sheets were prepared, and each of them was composed of 3 photos of a brand's catalog and logo, the interior of a selected store that carried products of the brand, and formal suits selected from each brand's spring/summer 1993 collections. Subjects were 460 women in the age groups of 20-50s who live in Seoul Metropolitan area. Each of the subjects was provided with a survey questionnaire and 16 stimulus sheets. The main findings of this research prove that consumers follow a certain selection process model when they purchase clothes: consumers, first, from images of merchandise based on the trademarks, stares, and products and those formed images work il.: medium variables and in the end they help the consumers decide whether to buy the products.