SEGMENTATION OF FEMALE APPAREL MARKET THROUGH CONSUMER DECISION-MAKING STYLES

Year 2016, Volume: 5 Issue: 9, 115 - 130, 01.01.2016

Seda Yıldırım Kenan Aydın Erol Ustaahmetoğlu

Abstract

The market of women apparel is in a quite growing trend todays. So this big market has a great competition and businesses try to catch customer and get customer loyalty. But businesses should know how women make buying decision for fashion apparel products and what kinds of specific characteristics defines women in fashion apparel market. In this concept, consumer decision-making style inventory(CSI) of Kendall and Splores(1986) has been an useful tool for both businesses and academics to understand consumer’s buying behavior and so determining specific sub-markets in related markets or sectors. With this study, it was purposed to determine women’s decision-making styles in apparel products and get a significant sub-segments for apparel market. A survey method was used and this survey included the scale of Consumer Style Inventory(CSI) with 40-items were adapted for apparel products. Then this survey was implemented to females that visiting a big shopping mall that called as Outlet Center which was thought as one of biggest shopping areas in Kocaeli,Turkey. From distributed 500 survey forms, 390 of them was collected as suitable for analyses. Results of analyses showed that females could be segmented through consumer decision-making styles as perfect-brand lovers, hedonist-fashion keepers, confused-impulsive buyers and price keepers in female apparel market

Keywords

Consumer Decision-Making Styles, Female Apparel Market, market segmentation, apparel market, segmentation

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