Apparel Product Quality: Its Nature and Measurement

Abstract

An important issue of apparel - apparel product quality -has not been significantly addressed in past research, particularlywhere the pre-purchase perceptions of consumers areconcerned. The goal of this study is to identify how consumersdefine intrinsic apparel product quality. This will be accomplishedby 1) examining the issue of quality as applied toproducts, 2) exploring past research on apparel product quality,3) constructing a scale (ApparEx) to assess intrinsic apparelproduct quality, and 4) relating ApparEx with service qualityas measured by SERVQUAL. Product quality is the consumer’s judgment of the standardof performance for a product. The cues used by consumers tojudge quality can be classified as either intrinsic or extrinsic. While the topic of apparel product quality has been examinedin the literature, the focus of such efforts has been largely onperceptions of apparel quality resulting from post-use orpost-exposure analysis. What has not received significant researchattention are the pre-use expectations or beliefs aboutintrinsic apparel quality. These pre-use expectations can be expectedto be a primary determining factor of consumer purchasingbehavior. The initial stage in the development of an instrument tomeasure prepurchase perceptions of intrinsic apparel productquality is to generate a set of items deemed to cover the domainof the intrinsic apparel product quality construct. Sincethe literature suggests that this construct is multi-dimensionalin nature, the scale was developed with the goal of identifyingand measuring the salient dimensions of intrinsic apparel productquality. Drawn from studies of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfactionwith apparel items, texts documenting apparel manufacturingstandards, and from technical standards drawn by theAmerican Association for Textile Technology, eight dimensionsof apparel quality were proposed. Seventy-four items were developedbased on the above sources to address each proposeddimension of the construct. Four forms of the instrument wereconstructed, each focusing on a different apparel product classification(underwear/lingerie or sleepwear, casual sportswear, dresswear, and coats and jackets (outerwear)). The sampling design used in this study was a purposiveone, using students enrolled in upper-division (junior and seniorlevel) university business courses at major universities locatedin the Midwest and in the Southern U.S. The instrumentwas administered on-site to students present in selected businessclasses chosen to preclude the possibility of students beingsolicited more than once. Of the 984 questionnaires distributed,131 were not determined to be usable, resulting in ausable return rate of 86.6 percent. Interestingly, the resultssuggest that the findings were not significantly different betweenthe product categories indicating that the subject datamay reasonably be pooled. A factor analysis resulted in sevenfactors being retained: 1) performance, 2) components, 3) garmentcare, 4) appearance, 5) construction/workmanship, 6)style/fashion, and 7) fit. While the pattern does not reproduceexactly the relationships proposed in the early stages ofApparEx development, the results were largely consistent. How well does the measure relate to other constructs towhich the construct is theoretically related? This was accomplishedby relating ApparEx with SERVQUAL, an instrumentdeveloped to measure the related concept of service quality. The objective was to determine how, if at all, the dimensionsof the ApparEx scale relate to the dimensions of theSERVQUAL scale. The results seem to display a consistentpattern. It appears that two factors of the SERVQUAL scale(dependability and tangibility) are positively correlated with thefactors of the ApparEx scale and that the other two factors ofthe SERVQUAL scale (empathy and responsiveness) are negativelyrelated with the factors of the ApparEx scale. The resultsalso suggest that the garment care factor of the ApparExscale is not related strongly with the SERVQUAL factors, andthat the style/fashion factor of the ApparEx scale relates onlywith the dependability and responsiveness factors of theSERVQUAL scale. These findings support the multidimensionalityof the instrument, and that quality is not a genericphenomenon - quality as it relates to apparel productsand quality as it relates to service issues appear to be twodistinct concepts, at least as far as expectations are concerned. This provides additional evidence of the construct validity ofthe ApparEx scale. Previous research has largely ignored the consumer’s perspectivein the discussion of product quality; apparel has notbeen an exception. In practice, intrinsic apparel product qualityhas been typically defined based on production-orientedstandards. In the instances where the consumers’ perspectivehas been addressed, it is most often within the context ofwhat is thought to be what customers desire, instead of their actual desires. The natural outcome of this approach is that agap likely exists between what consumers want and what managersthink that consumers want. The ApparEx instrument developedin this paper can provide a mechanism by which managerscan directly determine the apparel product quality expectationsof their clientele. The results also suggest that consumers of apparel productsexpect the same dimensions of quality across product categorylines. If consumers hold lower expectations of quality for apparelitems which cost less, it was not apparent from thisstudy. While it is true that consumers can best objectively assessproduct quality only after purchase and use, and that apurchased product’s inability to adequately perform will likelyaffect an individual’s subsequent purchasing behavior, it is theinitial prepurchase quality assessment which will have an immediatematerial effect on consumers’ purchasing decisions.