Market Research Of Fashion Preference - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about theMarket Research Of Fashion Preference. Answer: Introduction As time goes by and new generations coming, fashions are also changing with time to fit the desire of the current generations. Australia is experiencing a rapid fashion wear style change that are made in a manner that they can stand distinct from the European fashion wear. Culture is a big influence in the transformation of the fashions as considered by Australian designers (Weller, 2013). The research was therefore conducted to check on the market requirement and what is preferred by the Kent Institute students to avoid having a lot of dead stock. From the responses from the students, the information can be transmitted to the designers so that whenever they are designing a new fashion they should consider the preference of the students. The aim of every producer have been to have their products bought at the shortest time possible so that they can produce more and maximize their sales and so to the profits (Nagurney, 2010). Starting up a fashion wear shop around Kent institution tar geting the students as the potential customers need the supply of the fashions that are most preferred by the students. Taste and preference of people vary from one individual to another, but through carrying out a research, the market research results can be useful to identify the common preference of the students. As being one of the factors to consider, population is fundamental for it is associated with the number of possible customers that would be shopping from the business. The business is to be located at a strategic location adjacent to the institution so that the students can easily access the shop. We targeted a population of over 7000 students. Out of that population, a sample size of 20 respondents was taken to participate in the research process. The sample size was made as small to suit and reduce on the expenses that would be incurred should the researcher engage a larger proportion or the entire population. Business technology have rocked all the forms of business and the business management is tending to shift to cope up with the current changes. Social media has formed a platform where the business personnel and their customers interact on a daily basis concerning the products supplied or sold by the business (Trainor et al, 2014). As a result therefore, the fashion wear business management wished to venture into online selling and among the objectives being; To determine the correlation between expenses of an individual per month with their gender. To determine if there exist relationship between online shoppers and the frequency at which they shop online. To meet these objectives, questions on the questionnaires were structured to aim at answering some of these questions by the respondents. Methods of data collection There are several methods that can be used by the researchers to collect data from the respondents. In this market research, questionnaires were preferred. Questionnaire is a set of structured questions interrogating the respondents about a certain subject of study that is filled by the respondents themselves (Scheidt-Nave et al, 2012). The question types that were used in the questionnaire structure were closed ended questions that were specifically for quantitative and qualitative data. This is far much different from interviews where the enumerator ask questions to the respondents directly. The questionnaires used in this case were handed to the respondents directly one on one. Regular and routine data were aimed at being collected concerning the fashion wear as used by the respondents. Questionnaires are known for their advantages of providing the participants with ample time to respond to the questions thus giving them confidence of providing reliable information. The questions structure were made short and easy to understand to avoid the problem of skipping some of the questions by the respondents when responding to the questions. The questions outlined in the questionnaire covered both the qualitative and quantitative data. Every selected participant was required to respond to all the questions as outlined on the questionnaire and then hand it back to the researcher when it is filled with answers. At some points, interviews were incorporated with the questionnaires for clarity pf the questions the respondents found unclear so that the correct responses were provided. From the population of over 7000 students, the sample size that was preferred for use was 20. The participants were selected at random by applying the probabilistic methods such as the simple random sampling so that the participants are not only collected from one part of Kent institution but is spread to cover all parts of the entire institution. This helped to deal with biasness in the collected data and ensuring the correctness of the data. Though small sample size is known for its unrepresentativeness of the population, it was preferred due to some of the advantages it has (Cattaneo et al, 2015). One of the major advantages was that it was pocket friendly and unexpansive not to forget that it also did not consume a lot of time as compared to when the sample size is big. Summary of the dataset Gender Age Frequency Exp/month Fashion Color Preference Material Shopped online Frequency online Female 23-27 Weekly 100 Shoes only Blue Casual wear Leather shoes Yes 5-10 times Female 18-22 Twice 51-100 Shoes only Red Casual wear Synthetic leather shoes Yes Male 28-32 Once 20-50 Clothes and shoes Black Official wear Synthetic leather shoes No 5-10 times Female 23-27 Five times and more 100 Clothes and shoes White Casual wear Rubber shoes No 5-10 times Male 23-27 Twice 51-100 Clothes only Blue Official wear Leather shoes Yes 5-10 times Male 23-27 Once 20-50 Clothes and shoes Black Official wear Leather shoes No 5-10 times Female 18-22 Weekly 100 Shoes only Maroon Casual wear Leather shoes Yes Male 23-27 Twice 20 Clothes and shoes Red Official wear Synthetic leather shoes No 5-10 times Female 23-27 Weekly 20-50 Clothes only Purple Casual wear Rubber shoes Yes Male 32 Once 20-50 Clothes only Green Official wear Rubber shoes Yes 5-10 times Male 28-32 Twice 20 Shoes only Black Casual wear Synthetic leather shoes Yes 5-10 times Male 32 Twice 51-100 Shoes only Blue Casual wear Synthetic leather shoes No 5-10 times Female 23-27 Five times and more 51-100 Clothes and shoes Black Casual wear Leather shoes Yes Female 32 Weekly 100 Clothes and shoes Yellow Casual wear Leather shoes Yes Male 23-27 Once 20-50 Shoes only Green Official wear Rubber shoes Yes 5-10 times Male 28-32 Twice 20 Clothes only Black Official wear Rubber shoes Yes 5-10 times Male 23-27 Twice 20 Clothes only White Casual wear Rubber shoes Yes 5-10 times Female 18-22 Weekly 20-50 Clothes only Maroon Casual wear Rubber shoes Yes Female 23-27 Twice 51-100 Shoes only Red Official wear Leather shoes Yes 5-10 times Female 23-27 Weekly 100 Shoes only Purple Casual wear Leather shoes Yes Table 1: Gender of the respondents Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Male 10 50.0 50.0 50.0 Female 10 50.0 50.0 100.0 Total 20 100.0 100.0 The presented table above represents the gender of the students who were sampled to take part in the data collection process. As seen, equal number of males to that of females represented by 50% was sampled. Gender equity was opted for to avoid one gender dominancy. Demographic information are some of the important data in the market research since the characteristics of the targeted population can be easily understood which can be important in the business decision making. Table 2: Frequency of buying fashion wear per month Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Once 4 20.0 20.0 20.0 Twice 8 40.0 40.0 60.0 Weekly 6 30.0 30.0 90.0 Five times and more 2 10.0 10.0 100.0 Total 20 100.0 100.0 The frequency at which the customers buy products from the market is one of the key aspects to be considered when carrying out market research. In this case, since the business to be opened was dealing with the fashion wear, the respondents were required to state their frequency of buying the fashion wear products. 20% of the respondents responded that they only buy fashion wear once, 40% responded that they do buy the fashion wear twice per month, 30% responded that they bought fashion wear on weekly basis and lastly only 10% of the respondents responded that they would buy fashion wear five times or more in a month. Table 3: Preferred Colors by the respondents Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent White 2 10.0 10.0 10.0 Black 5 25.0 25.0 35.0 Green 2 10.0 10.0 45.0 Yellow 1 5.0 5.0 50.0 Blue 3 15.0 15.0 65.0 Maroon 2 10.0 10.0 75.0 Red 3 15.0 15.0 90.0 Purple 2 10.0 10.0 100.0 Total 20 100.0 100.0 Taste of the customers vary from one customer to the other. The taste vary from color to other aspects. 10% of the respondents preferred white color, 25% preferred black, 10% preferred green, 5% preferred yellow, 15% preferred blue, 10% preferred maroon, 15% preferred red and lastly 10% preferred purple for their fashion wear. In this case, supply of the fashion wear has to consider those color taste whenever they are placing order of the fashion wear to be supplied to have customers demands met. Table 4: Students Expense per Month Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent 20 4 20.0 20.0 20.0 20-50 6 30.0 30.0 50.0 51-100 5 25.0 25.0 75.0 100 5 25.0 25.0 100.0 Total 20 100.0 100.0 Twenty percent of the sampled students responded that they did spend less than 20 dollars per month on fashion wear, 30% responded that they did spend 20-50 dollars per month, 25% of the sample responded that they did spend between 51 and 100 dollars on fashion wear per month and another 25% responded that they did spend over 100 dollars per month. From this, it can be seen that majority of the students were spending relatively substantial amount on fashion wear per month. This can be taken into consideration by the business management and decision makers to decide on what amount of goods to supply and how frequent to do that should the spending behavior of the students remain this way. Table 5: Do you Shop online? Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent Yes 15 75.0 75.0 75.0 No 5 25.0 25.0 100.0 Total 20 100.0 100.0 To the question of whether the sampled students shopped online, 75% of the sample responded that they do shop online against 25% of the students who responded that they do not shop online. This showed that high number of were online shoppers and this could lead to the possibility of engaging in online business to sell the fashion wears to the students when making business decisions. Table 6: Frequency of Shopping online Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent 7 35.0 35.0 35.0 5-10 times 13 65.0 65.0 100.0 Total 20 100.0 100.0 For the students who ever shopped online, 35% of the sample responded that they did shop less than 5 times online in a year while the remaining 65% of the respondents responded that they did shop 5-10 times in a year. Despite the growth of technology and interaction between the business and the customers, the internet coverage in almost all over the places, people were still not shopping online at high frequency in a year. Thinking of incorporating online shopping in this case would still be a good idea that would be beneficial in the future as people change from physical shopping to online shopping with time. Figure 1: A graph of Expenses per Month by Gender From the sample, 2 males had their expenses below 20 dollars, 5 male students had their expenses between 20 and 50 dollars, 2 had their expenses ranging between 51 and 100 with only one male student responding that his expenses were more than 100 dollars. On the other hand, 2 female students responded that their expenses were less than 20 dollars, 1 had expenses between 20 and 50 dollars, 3 had their expenses between 51 and 100 dollars and finally 4 had their expenses above 100 dollars. It can therefore be concluded from the data that most of the female students had higher expenses on fashion wear than their male counterparts. Figure 2: A Graph of Age by Gender Only one male student from the sample had 18-22 years of age, 5 of the males had their ages at 23-27 years, 3 had 28-32 years and lastly another one male had over 32 years. On the other hand, 2 female students had their ages between 18 and 22 years, 6 had 23-27 years and the other 2 had their ages above 32 years. Their seemed to be a balance in terms of age for both genders but most of the students had their ages ranging between 23-27 years. Data analysis Table 7: Descriptive Statistics for Quantitative Variables N Mean Std. Deviation Variance age 20 24.05 4.322 18.682 exp_month 20 82.15 47.472 2253.555 Valid N (listwise) 20 The participants average age in the process was 26.05 years with the variance of 18.682 and standard deviation of 4.322. Expense per month for sampled individuals had a mean of 82.15 dollars, variance of 2253.555 and the standard deviation of 47.472. it can therefore be seen from the above table results that students expenditure on fashion wear was below 100 dollars per month. Hypothesis testing Table 8: Correlations Between Gender and Expense per Month gender exp_month gender Pearson Correlation 1 .700** Sig. (2-tailed) .001 N 20 20 exp_month Pearson Correlation .700** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .001 N 20 20 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). Hypothesis H0: There is no correlation between expenses of an individual on fashion wear per month with their gender. H1: There is correlation between expenses of an individual on fashion wear per month with their gender. In the market research, one of the key objectives was to determine the correlation between expenses of an individual per month with their gender. From the correlation test table the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) was .700 meaning that the correlation was positive and strong between the expenses per month of an individual with their gender. The expenses of an individual were most likely to be affected by the gender of an individual as they showed strong correlation. As a result therefore, we reject the null hypothesis since significance value is less than P-value (.05) and conclude that there is a correlation between expenses of an individual on fashion wear per month with their gender. Table 9: shopped online * frequency online Cross-tabulation frequency_online Total 5-10 times shopped_online Yes Count 7 8 15 % within shopped_online 46.7% 53.3% 100.0% No Count 0 5 5 % within shopped_online 0.0% 100.0% 100.0% Total Count 7 13 20 % within shopped_online 35.0% 65.0% 100.0% Forty six point seven percent of the sampled students responded that they shopped online in less than 5 times per year against 53.3% of the respondents who responded that they did shop online at a frequency of between 5 and 10 times per academic year. This showed that the majority of the students were online shoppers at a relatively higher frequency in each academic year. Table 10: Correlations between Shopped online and Frequency of Shopping online Shopped online Frequency online Shopped online Pearson Correlation 1 .424 Sig. (2-tailed) .063 N 20 20 Frequency online Pearson Correlation .424 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .063 N 20 20 Hypothesis H0: There is no relationship existing between online shoppers and the frequency at which they shop online. H1: There is relationship existing between online shoppers and the frequency at which they shop online. Since the significance value (i.e. .063) is greater than P-value (.05), we fail to reject the null hypothesis and make a conclusion that indeed there was no relationship existing between online shoppers and the frequency at which students shopped online. This means that being that the students shop online would not be enough to determine the number of times they would be shopping online. From this therefore the business decision makers are supposed to take into account that they should not only rely on the fact that large number of the students were shopping online but the frequency of shopping also matters and which the test has determined to there being no relationship. Conclusion In conclusion, from the result we have found out that the mode of expenses of an individual is directly related to gender of an individual in response to buying fashion wear. Also, it can be concluded that there is no relationship existing between online shoppers and the frequency at which they shop online. It is therefore recommended that the business purchase department to consider the varied preferences of the students so that the fashions supplied best suit students desire. Reference Cattaneo, M.D., Frandsen, B.R. and Titiunik, R., 2015. 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