Consumer's clothing involvement and External Information Search

Rhee, Young Sun Dept. of clothing and Textiles Graduate School of Seoul National University

One of the most important characteristics of clothing as a consumer product is consumer's high interpersonal symbolism. Consumer's buying behavior.
This research was intended to reveal the relationships among the consumer's involvement toward clothing product, information searching behavior, and clothing buying behavior. Four research problems were set up for the study as follows:
1. To identify dimensions of clothing involvement based on the theoretical framework of the concept.
2. To determine sources and amounts of consumer's ongoing as well as prepurchase information searching behavior.
3. To find out the effects of clothing involvement and demogrphic characteristics of consumers on external information searching behavior.
4. To find out the effects of clothing involvement and external information search on clothing buying behavior.
A questionnaire was developed and administered 780 employed and unemployed housewives living in Seoul and Taejon area during the fall of 1990. Social daytime wear was selected as a clothing item for the study.
A literature study was carried out to determine the theoretical framework of the clothing involvement prior to the emperical study. As a result, it was suggested that the concept of clothing involvement is composed of six dimensions: importance, interest, symbolism, pleasure, fashion, and perceived rist. It was found out that the dimension of importance is neither independent, nor mutually exclusive from the other dimensuins, and is applicable to all dther dimensions.
Consumers acquire information by ongoing search without any specific buying intention, and also by prepurchase search for specific clothing. As a result of common factor analysis, five factors were extracted representing different patterns underlying the prepurchase information search activities used by housewives for the selection of social daytime apparel. They was mass media search , store intensive search, print-oriented search, interpersonal search, and professional search.
Significant relationships were found out among the five dimensions of clothing involvement, ongoing information search , and demographic variables. Especially the five dimensions of clothing involvement had strong influence on ongoing information search.
Clothing involvement, ongoing information search, and purchase frequencies had positive influences on prepurchase information search. On the contrary, housewives' and husbands' educational level and the state of employment had negative influences on prepurchase information search. These independent variables had selective influences on total and the five types of prepurchase information search.
Finally, the dimensions of clothing involvement, ongoing information search, income and housewives' educaitonal level had significant influences on clothing purchase frequencies and the average price of clothing.

Key words: consumer involvement, clothing involvement, information search, on going information search, prepurchase information search, consumer buying behavior, clothing buying behavior.