Fashion & Textile Research Journal (한국의류산업학회지)

The Society of Fashion and Textile Industry (한국의류산업학회)
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A Study of Consumers' Responses to the Attributes of Salespeople in Fashion Retail Stores

패션매장에서 판매원의 특성에 대한 소비자 반응 연구

  • Seo, Min Jeong (Dept. of Fashion Design, Chonbuk National University) ;
  • Jun, Daegeun (Dept. of Clothing and Textiles, Andong National University)
  • Received : 2018.07.06
  • Accepted : 2018.08.31
  • Published : 2018.10.31
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Abstract

This study is to examine the effects of salespeople' attributes (i.e., empathy, availability, professional appearance) on consumer cognition, emotion, and behavior. A conceptual model was developed based on stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory and cognition-emotion theory. A total of 542 questionnaires were collected online and some incompletely written questionnaires were excluded. Because of the high possibility of memory distortion, only the questionnaires (n=220) written by those who visited fashion stores within one week were used for the final analysis. The results of PLS analyses demonstrated that 1) salespeople's empathy directly affected consumers' shopping emotion; 2) salespeople's availability and professional appearance indirectly affected consumer's shopping emotion through store image; 3) consumers' shopping emotion positively affected purchase intention. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed in conclusion. As a result of this research, the main characteristics of the salespeople were identified in order to allow the consumers visiting the fashion store to buy the fashion products naturally and the basic directions of sales manuals for the salespeople in the fashion store were presented. It is also hoped that academic researchers will be able to use the characteristics of salespeople as the main data to understand how they affect consumers' cognitive and emotional responses and how they are connected to purchase behavior.

Keywords

References

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