The Actual Condition of Care Label Attached to Clothing and Consumers' Perception

의류제품 취급표시 부칙 실태 및 소비자 의식

To study on the actual condition of care label attached to clothing and consumers' perception, 250 summer clothes sold at department store-blouse, trousers, one-piece dress, knit cardigan and skirt-were investigated during July 2000. In addition, a questionnaire was administered to 192 women in Taegu during August. The fiber contents of surveyed clothes were polyester 100% & polyester blend (26%), rayon 100% & rayon blend (18%), cotton 100% & cotton blend (17%), wool 100% & wool blend (14%) and others. All clothes surveyed were attached care label and the signals showed on care labels were 4~6 kinds about cleaning, squeezing, drying, bleaching, and ironing methods. 92% of clothes had to be dry-cleaned and only 8% could be wet-cleaned. Considered the surveyed clothes were for summer which needs frequent washing and the clothing items, the number of clothes had to dry-cleaned were too many. The bleaching instructions were no chlorine bleach (74%), no bleaching (21%) and others. The ironing instructions were cool ironing ($80{\sim}120^{\circ}C$) with cover (24%) and warm ironing ($140{\sim}160^{\circ}C$) with cover (69%) primarily. The drying instructions was dry on a hanger in the shade (54%) and 38% had no signal or incorrect signal. The properties of summer clothes considered important by consumers were wrinkled hardly, hand-washable, machine-washable, needed no iron and etc. Actually most of summer clothes were hand or machine-washed. Also, the majority of respondents felt inconvenient to have to dry-clean summer clothes. More than 80% respondents looked over care label and fiber content label before buying clothes. However most of respondents did not followed that instructions exactly and thought care label instructions were not correct. Considered this results, the suppliers have to make efforts to attach correct and appropriate care label which furnish the correct information to consumers.