Abstract

The purposes of the study were (1) to segment the female college apparel market based on clothing shopping orientation and (2) to develop a profile of each segment regard to fashion life style, information sources, clothing selection criteria, the importance of store attributes and patronage behavior. The data were collected through questionaire by random sample of 526 female college students. By cluster analysis of shopping orientation factors, four groups were identified(apathetic apparel shopper, highly involved apparel shopper, economic apparel shopper, psycho-socializing apparel shopper). Four groups were then compared through multivariate analysis of variance and chi-square statistics on 3 fashion life style factors, 11 information sources, 10 clothing selection criterias, 9 store attributes and 1 patronage behavior variable. Significant difference were found among the four groups on all these variables which indicate that clothing shopping orientation can be a useful base for segmenting female apparel market and these groups are unique in terms of the above 5 variables.

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