• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.160-174
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• 2005

Despite the decrease in the number of children due to low birth rate, the domestic children's apparel market has been achieving steady growth as family income is rising thanks to more opportunities for working women, parents spend more on their children, and they prefer brand products that make their children look special. In addition, the market is suffering from hard competition as large enterprises have joined the race. The present study purposed to survey the children's apparel market in Korea, which is in a transitional period, and to contribute to the development of the market with Korean brands. For this purpose, we analyzed the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century based on the current state of the domestic children's apparel market and, based on the findings, forecasted the future trend of children's apparel brands, suggested improvements for expected problems, proposed standards for coping with changes such as diversification, high quality and differentiation in the children's apparel market, and provided consumers with information on how to purchase products. According to the result of analyzing the characteristics of children's apparel brands in the 21st century, brands are categorized largely into four types - life cultural brands, functional product brands, character brands and brands advancing to China. Life cultural brands equipped with all necessities for children are expanding, and with the deepening social problems of environmental pollution and the reduction of the child population, functional products made of environment-friendly materials are spreading widely, targeting infants and children. Furthermore, for extending age targets and diversifying products, children's apparel is using characters. The use of characters is expected to have a considerable effect on the growth of brands because children are more subjective as consumers than before and they are more easily persuaded with characters. Domestic children's apparel brands advancing to China have a high expectation of success in overcoming the limitation of the local market that has reached its peak and growing into global brands. Korean apparel makers are struggling to overcome the depressed domestic market, to recover consumers' consumption, to cope with market opening, to pursue high value of sensibility and to expand the seniors' market, etc. In this situation, future trends of children's apparel brands will be the expansion of family brands, brand totalization, quality price, niche market (pre-teen market), etc. In response to these trends, we made the following suggestions for improvement. 1. Children's apparel brands are evolving into family brands as well as into total brands through voluming. Today, however, apparel makers are advancing to the children's apparel market with the concept of adults' apparel and, as a result, children's apparel is merely adults' apparel of reduced size, having problems in design, color and materials. Thus, apparel makers must develop design considering the wide range of size and the characteristics of children's apparel, strengthen sourcing abilities to create revenues, and make thorough survey of customers to find common denominators between adults' apparel and children's apparel considering that characteristic that the target class is different from the buyer class. Furthermore, they must make active investments in human resources, develop outstanding products through advanced planning and design, and support marketing techniques and management systems to stores. 2. As the declining birth rate will continue to have a negative effect on the market, it may be difficult to expand the market size but there is still a margin for growth through high-sensibility and high-quality products. The competitiveness of brands is determined by their market shares. Accordingly, concepts should be specialized according to lifestyle, customers' diverse needs should be satisfied, and cross-coordination should be achieved within a brand. 3. Considering Korean parents who do not spare investment in their children despite shrinking consumption, functional products must be high value-added goods that can enhance efficiency. However, in the current situation of the infants' apparel industry where a textile manufacturer supply its products to multiple brands, it is difficult to develop unique products only based on materials. Thus, it is considered urgent to appeal to consumers not by relying on materials only but by finding methods of applying their own characters to children's dress.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.642-653
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• 2002

The purposes of this studs were 1) to identify web navigation values and classify consumers based on these values and 2) to determine differences between consumer groups and between types of shopping mall in evaluation of website attributes when shopping apparel. The data were collected via a self-administered questionnaire from 204 male and female students who experienced shopping at the website, living in Cheju and analyzed by factor analysis, cluster analysis and t-test. Two factors of navigation value were found and labeled as; information value and entertainment value. Two groups were identified based on navigation value; users of information value (53%) and users of entertainment value (47%). Significant differences between two groups were found in evaluating website attributes selling products of various types regarding apparel products and processes for information search, order and payment. However, for shopping mall website selling only apparel products, differences between two groups were not significant in evaluating most attributes except for two items to evaluate apparel products. Differences between shopping mall types (shopping malls selling products of various types and selling only apparel product) were significant in evaluation of internet users of information value regarding attributes of apparel products while differences between shopping mall types were not significant in evaluation of users of entertainment value regarding all attributes. Internet users of information value showed favor to shopping mall website of department store type chi e internet users of entertainment value showed favor to shopping mall website selling only apparel products.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.87-96
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• 2014

E-shopping is traditional method to purchase products in a modern society. Fashion products are one of the most popular product categories sold and impulsively bought online. This study examined the causal relationship of shopping value, positive emotion, urge to buy impulsively, and e-impulse buying in the context of shopping for apparel products. A self-administered questionnaire developed from the literature was administered in class to 501 female college students in Busan. AMOS 21.0 estimated the structural equation model of e-impulse buying using a correlation matrix with a maximum likelihood. The analysis of the data supported most of the predictions. The results suggested that consumer shopping values (hedonic shopping value and utilitarian shopping value) had a positive effect on positive emotion; in addition, positive emotion urge to buy impulsively directly affected the e-impulse buying of apparel products. In the structural model, e-impulse buying of consumers can be predicted by the attitudinal component (e.g., shopping values), emotional factors (e.g., enthusiastic or proud), and the urge to buy impulsively felt by young consumers. There are implications that both positive emotion and impulsive buying are important predictors for the e-impulse buying of apparel products by consumers. Moreover, the urge to buy impulsively was an important mediator to determine the e-impulse buying of apparel products. This study provides insight to retailers and researchers to understand the structural relationship of consumer characteristics and the e-impulse buying of apparel products.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.125-137
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• 2013

This study investigated the conceptual constructs of ethical consumption beliefs and their impacts on the consumer attitudes toward eco-friendly faux leather apparel goods. The mediating roles of perceived consumer effectiveness and apparel environmental knowledge were examined in this research. A survey was conducted on female consumers between the ages of 20 and 50; subsequently, 300 responses were analyzed. The results of this study were follows: 1) The results of factor analysis and the reliability test on ethical consumption beliefs clearly showed factorial structures that include Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly Consumption, Animal Welfare, and Individual Enhancement. 2) The results of the mean scores of ethical consumption beliefs showed that respondents tended to consider Social Responsibility more important than the other three factors. Ethical consumption beliefs showed a significantly positive influence on consumer attitudes toward eco-friendly faux leather apparel products; in addition, Social Responsibility had the highest effect on product attitudes among the four factors of ethical consumption beliefs. 3) The perceived consumer effectiveness and environmental knowledge of apparel had important medicating roles in the relation-ship between ethical consumption beliefs and attitudes towards eco-friendly faux leather apparel products. This study highlighted a potential marketability of eco-friendly faux leather apparel products and that ethical consumption beliefs, perceived consumer effectiveness, and apparel environmental knowledge should be promoted among consumers to increase favorable attitudes towards these products.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.1293-1302
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• 2001

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of apparel purchase motivation in the sense of tonic activation. 746 female apparel consumers answered the questions about the apparel purchase motivation, apparel purchase behavior; frequency of apparel purchase and monthly clothing budget, and demographic variables. There were three factors in the apparel purchase motivation; preference of apparel shopping, priority of apparel purchase to other purchase to other products, interest in clothing. Apparel purchase motivation affected apparel purchase behavior especially in thee monthly clothing budget. Demographic variables such as age, income, education level, job status, and marital status affected apparel purchase motivation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.1527-1576
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• 2002

Quick Response based Mass-Customization can be produced and distributed customized goods and services on mass basis in apparel e-business. Because consumers can: t touch and feel the apparel products in e-business, they tend to have the negative buying behavior. The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences of consumer's texture sensibility of apparel products based on marketing channels (on-line/off-line). Two types of questionnaires for on-line and of f-line were used to assess consumer sensibility on apparel fabric. The 8 swatches were selected in regard to the previous literatures. 205 questionnaires for each type (on-line/off-line) were distributed. Statistical devices were t-test, mean and standard deviation with SPSS10.0. The result of this study was showed that there were partially significant differences on consumers' texture sensibility on apparel products between on-line and off-line. Under on-line environment, consumers perceived corduroy as warm, strong, and sandy. taffeta as warm, sandy, and glossy, denim as sandy, and warm, organza as sandy, and thin, satin as sandy, dense, and modern, chiffon as sandy, and flat, velvet as warm, and soft, single jersey as warm, soft, and comfortable. Therefore, apparel firms cooperating based Mass-Customization in e-business have to pay attention to the differences on consumers’ texture sensibility of on-line apparel products from those of off-line.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.109-126
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of price-attitude toward apparel products on shopping values and consumption behavior. The study was carried out in Deagu and Kyungbook area. Applying the convenience sampling, total 326 questionnaire were collected from university students who were randomly selected as participants. This study used frequency, factor analysis, reliability analysis, regression analysis, and t-test for data analysis. The finding are as follows. Price-attitude toward apparel products was categorized into information leading, price dignity, price discount, list price orientation, quality value and using coupons. Shopping tendency factors were found as pursuit of pleasure, pursuit of sociality, and pursuit of economic feasibility. Consumption behavior factors were categorized into impulsive buying, ostentatious consumption, utilization of internet information, possession of material and brand trust. Price-attitude toward apparel products had a significant effect on shopping values and consumption behavior. University students seemed to consider the value of money to be very important as well as economic feasibility. They utilized information from the internet to buy products with good quality and showed high usage level of coupons. And, university students who buy at a least price tried to show dignity with expensive brand products and they consider those brands express self-confidence.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.889-900
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was; to investigate consumers'selection criteria for their trade area when purchasing apparel products; to study whether there is a difference on the importance of the selection criteria; to examine consumers'willingness to visit specific trade area according to the types of apparel products. Four hundred sixty-nine female consumers who lived in the two new towns, Bundang and Ilsan participated in the study by completing questionnaires. Data were analyzed using factor analyses, t-tests, paired t-teats and chi-square analyses. The results indicated that consumer selected trade area based on shop variety within trade areas and range of products, customer services, environment of trade area, price level, entertaining features of the trade area, and the convenience of location and shopping time. In addition, the importance of these criteria varied according to the types of apparel products(i.e. formal wears and casual wears). The types of apparel products had influence on consumers'willingness to visit specific trade area. Consumers preferred the trade areas in the new towns for purchasing formal wears, whereas they frequented the trade areas in Seoul for purchasing casual wears.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.31 no.3 s.162
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• pp.440-450
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was intended to investigate influence of consumer's brand loyalty, competitor's brand price and brand switching intention in condition of discount sale of casual apparel products. The data for the study was obtained through the use of an experimental design which was $2{\times}[2{\times}2]$ mixed factorial design. The subjects were 730 college students. The data were analyzed by cluster analysis, ANOVA, simple interaction analysis and simple main-effect analysis. The following results were founded: First, The results indicated that the 3-way interaction effects among consumer's brand loyalty competitor's brand price and discount on brand switching of casual apparel products. Second, the results indicated that the 3-way interaction effects among consumer's brand loyalty competitor's brand price and discount on consumer preference of casual apparel products. These results indicated that low brand loyalty group on casual products showed high preference and high brand switching on competitors brand when competitor's brand price was lower than preferred brand price and discount type was absolute frame. High bran loyalty group on casual apparel products preferred and switched high competitor's brand when discount type was absolute frame.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1127-1137
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• 2010

As directly imported apparel brands are actively entering the domestic market, studies of the marketing aspects of these imported apparel products and their overall consumption trend have been done. However, studies of whether are not the directly imported apparel products provide Korean consumers with an appropriate fit are not as common. Therefore, this study investigates the satisfaction with and problems associated with the fit along with the recognition of and preference for directly imported US apparel brands. 100 female college students who purchased directly imported US apparel brands participated in a survey. The results of this survey showed that their recognition of, preference for, possession rate of and satisfaction with the directly imported US apparel brands tend to be high. The major purchasing motivations were the excellent 'design' and 'color' of the products. The subjects reported that they were satisfied with the quality of 'materials' and 'sewing condition'. However, they were not satisfied with the 'comfort' or the 'size'. Their level of satisfaction with the fit of these products differed depending on the specific item. Their level of satisfaction with the fit of T-shirts and knits was high, whereas the level for pants was relatively low. They complained mostly about the sleeve length and garment length of upper-body garments and coats. They were not satisfied with how the pants fit. The areas of dissatisfaction regarding the pants were the waist girth, the crotch length and the pants length.