The Effect Of Product Involvement On Store Preference And Clothing Benefits Sought For African-American Female Students

Abstract

Clothing is one of the most essential things that human bodies need for the multipurpose reasons. Such clothing has been recognized as the high involvement product for many years, resulting to one of the very interesting subjects in consumer research. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of clothing involvement on clothing store preference and clothing benefits sought for African-American female college students. This study demonstrates that African-American female college students are generally satisfied with the current ready-to-wear (RTW) clothing. To purchase such RTW clothing, internet store is revealed as one of very exciting shopping centers. Instead, catalog or mail ordering does not strongly attract to the African-American female college consumers. Compared to other involvement groups, high clothing involvement consumers are actively seeking for the fashion image, one of the factors in clothing benefits sought, as well as actively shopping at department store, specialty stores, outlet stores, and internet in Types of Stores. Interestingly, low involvement consumers are generally less interested in store preference or clothing benefits sought than other involvement groups except for the camouflage benefits.