A STUDY ON THE USE OF ADVERTISING MEDIA IN THE PROCESS OF FASHION APPAREL PURCHASING DECISION-MAKING BY YOUNG MARRIED WOMEN

CHAI, Bo-Eun(PR & Advertising Major, Dept. of Journalism, The Graduate School Chung-Ang University)

The object of this study is to find out from what media the young married women get the information when they buy the fashion apparels. For this purpose this study explore the relationship between the types of media as the dependent variable, and the consumer characteristics, the product characteristics, the situation characteristics and the market characteristics as independent variables.

The types of media include TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, direct mail including fashion catalog, and display of fashion stores (POP). Each characteristics are elaborated in subcategories. The consumer characteristics include age, income, monthly expenditure on buying fashion clothes, education and job. Mode, brand, practicality, price are included in the product characteristics. The situational characteristic is the pressure of time when they buy their clothes and finally department store, boutique shop, discount shop and local clothing stores are subcategories of market characteristics.

To find correlation between the dependent variables and independent variables, the researcher has conducted a survey to the 118 young married-women who was born after 1960 living in Seoul, who were selected randomly. The results of the survey are as follows;

The most frequently selected media by young married-women is the display of the fashion store. Findings about the relation between consumer characteristics and the use of media are (1) the younger married women used the magazine more than any other media as the fashion information source. In t-test, the married-women who were below 30 years old used magazines more as information media than those who were over 30 years old (2) The young married women with less income used the radio as the information source more often. The married-women who earned over 150 million won a month used the display of fashion stores and newspaper as information source more frequently than those who earned below 150 million won. (3) The monthly expenditure on buying fashion clothes, education and job had no significant relations with the use of media.

Findings about the relation between product characteristics and the use of media are that there were positive correlation between 1) brand and direct mail including catalog, 2) practicality of the merchandise and newspaper, 3) price of the product and newspaper, and 4) price of the goods and TV. There were no significant correlation between situational characteristics and the use of media.

Findings about the relation between the type of store as market characteristics and the use of media are (1) the direct mail users are the married-women who bought their fashion clothes from discount shop less frequently, and more often from the boutique shops or from the department stores. (2) And those who buy the clothes from the discount shop use the display as one of the advertising information media.

The positive effect of display, as the previous studies showed, was also powerful to the young married women. And it is important to note that there are positive correlation between the practicality of the clothes and TV as the fashion information media, between the income and radio, between the practicality and newspaper, between the price of the apparel and newspaper, between the age of the young married women and magazine, between brand and direct mail, between the four factors of market characteristic and direct mail including catalog, and between the users of discount shop and display.

But the limitation of this study is that there were fewer factors which could be specified according to the types of media than those expected. It could be suggested it would be necessary of following studies to find the influencing factors in order to establish effective advertising strategies aiming at various consumers.