Customers’ Perception and Evaluation of Branded Apparel

Abstract

The present study titled “Customers’ perception and evaluation of branded apparel” focusses on the behavior and attitude of young
Indian customers in the age group of 18-25 years towards branded apparels. The present study aims at increasing understanding of Indian Customers’ brand choice for global and domestic brands.Customers’ perception and evaluation is an integral part of
Consumer buying behaviour. India is an emerging consumer market. With the advent of various national and international brands
being available in the Indian market for several decades, research in the area of branded apparel becomes imperative to understand
consumer buying behaviour. It has been observed that customers have a wide range of choices for purchasing apparels and they
have no clear vision to what they buy and when to buy. Today‘s consumption in young Indian customers has no confines - they work
and splurge money for more non-essential products and this has perhaps been an important driving factor and evolution in the
Indian Apparel Retail sector. Statistical tools and models used for analysis include Structural Equation Modelling, Mean and Rank,
Independent sample student t- test and one-way ANOVA. A sample of 2000 respondents of Delhi/NCR, Bangalore and Chandigarh
was considered for the study. These insights of young consumer behavior will be imperative in strategy formulation and facilitate
to gain from the situation which is instrumental in increasing the turnover. This segment of society i.e. young customers is very
important group amongst all the groups in the society because major purchases in the family, is done for this segment and revolves
around this segment. This makes it all the more important to understand the psychology, mindset, motivators, satisfiers and dissatisfiers. In the present study, Parameters such as their shopping habits, gender differences while shopping, and important factors
that influence their purchase decision have been studied. This study developed apparel buying behaviour model on the basis of 5
dimensions namely Store attributes, Product attributes, Reference Groups, Promotional factors and Consumer characteristics.The
study suggests causal linkages among these dimensions, they are correlated with each other at a statistically significant level and
influence the buyers purchase behavior.This study contributes to academia by providing a conceptual framework to understand apparel buying behaviour of young Indian customers which can be used by practioners to improve their retail strategies and increase
their retail sales.
Keywords: ANOVA,