Knitwear Consumers′Demographic Characteristics and Evaluation Criteria

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of demographic characteristics and general buying characteristics of knitwear consumers on evaluation criteria and information source searching. In this study, a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to young career women and female undergraduate students. Of 580 questionnaires, 496 were used in the following analysis. The data was analyzed with the SPSS package. The research method used factor and reliability analysis to segment consumers by their knitwear evaluation criteria. T-test, one-way ANOVA and χ²were used to characterize the impact of characteristics of the consumer on knitwear evaluation criteria and information source searching in buying knitwear. The results of this study were as follows. First, the information sources of consumers were significantly different depending on their demographic characteristics(age). According to the difference in relationship between the age of consumers and information sources, the younger the consumer, the more information in fashion magazine, the older, in fashion advertisement on catalog. Second, the knitwear evaluation criteria of consumers was classified according to six characteristics - quality, price, aesthetic, situation, self-expression and external. Their knitwear evaluation criteria were significantly different depending on demographic characteristics(job, age, education, marital status) and the general buying characteristics of knitwear(annual knitwear/clothing buying expense and frequency). Career women and married women placed significant importance on practical aspects like quality and price characteristics, while undergraduate students and single women placed significant importance on practical aspects like quality and price characteristics, while undergraduate students and single women placed significant importance on aesthetic and self-expression characteristics. Also, a group with higher annual knitwear/clothing buying expense and frequency considered aesthetic and self-expression characteristics more important. The lower the annual knitwear/clothing buying expense and frequency, the higher a group considered quality and price characteristics more important.