Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: A, Dhruva College of Management, course: PGDM, language: English, abstract: In India retail industry is the largest among all the industries, the retail industry is upgrading itself providing with endless array for customer choices like changing life style, customers brand awareness depending on income level of customers. The retail industry in India is hailed as a sunrise sector and the value is estimated to increase from US $330 billion in 2007 to US$640 billion by 2015 i.e., almost double the value. The size of India's retail sector is currently estimated at around $450 billion and organized retail accounts for around 5% of the total market. We cannot take customers for granted because consumer buying behavior determines how consumer decides which product to buy and what all factors are responsible for the buying decision. The firm has to satisfy the needs and wants of a consumer. Hence the present study has been conducted to understand the impact of various factors viz. physical attributes, display, merchandise, sales people, and overall quality of store on customers' buying decision in Apparel Retailing.

Master's Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: 1.0, Thames Valley University, London, language: English, abstract: This dissertation is a study in the area of e-commerce. The aim of this study was to examine the adoption of online shopping and online shopping for clothing in particular and factors influencing the intention to purchase clothing online. A quantitative research method was used and a questionnaire designed on the website www.surveymonkey.com and then distributed by sending out the link leading to the survey via facebook and emails. 94 useful questionnaires were gathered from female and male UK students. SPSS 17 was used to analyse the collected data by conducting chi-square tests and Spearman's rho correlation tests to examine the relation between different variables. The constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) were used as a framework and basis for this research and were extended by further constructs. Therefore, the impact of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, prior online shopping experience, perceived risk and product involvement on the intention to purchase clothing online was analysed. Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and prior online shopping experience had positive effects on the intention to purchase clothing online. Perceived risk had a negative effect on the intention to purchase clothing online. These findings supported the hypotheses. Other than hypothesised, clothing product involvement did not have a significant positive effect on the intention to purchase clothing online.

Master's Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: Pass, , course: MBA - Consumer Behaviour, language: English, abstract: Consumer behaviour is always a very interesting and complex subject for all marketers and retailers. This study is also about a part of this complex subject- Impulse Buying behaviour found among Apparel Buyers and the influence of special prices and other factors on it. The study dealt with a very important topic in the modern fierce competition scenario, because impulse buying tendency spread all over the world and it is no more crazy habits of Americans. The income from impulse purchases phenomenally increasing every year and that’s why the subject getting more and more importance these days. The tendency is more intense as far as apparel purchases are concerned. Here the author did an effort to understand the causes and factors for impulse buying in apparels. Commonly special price is considered to be the most influential factor of impulse purchases. This study was comparative study between the influence of special prices and other variables. The methodology used for primary data collection was a combination of a questionnaire survey and a personal interview after that, with the customers of a leading retailer store for apparels in London. About 60 customers were surveyed. The result was pretty interesting, the variables studied in the research found to be more or less equal influential on customers though special prices top the list with a very little margin. The study concluded that most of the impulse purchases happen due to a combined influence of various factors. The impulse generated when a customer see an in- store display indicating a special price of a product can be taken as an example. So, for marketers, in order to make good results in impulse purchases they should coordinate various variables in an effective way, instead of concentrating only on a particular factor. The small size of sample and uncontrollable condition of current world economic condition could be taken as limitations for this study; otherwise the study was pretty general and standard in nature and was very useful and informative for practical applications.

While the whole world is witnessing a paradigm shift from traditional forms of retailing to a modern organized mall-driven sector, Indian retailing cannot float opposite in the direction the global wind blows. In spite of late entry, it is forecasted that the country will be the second largest market of the world shortly and shall lead the industry, the way world does. Increase in the rate of literacy, growing number of working women, highly disposable income, easy availability of credit at low interest rates and high rate of media penetration along with the assurance of similar quality products with large ambit of price differentiation, painted the country's dynamic organized retail landscape. Rising interest and growing expansion of organized retail market leading to success of a business, depends solely on consumers' urges that there is a need to study their buying behavior. But the existing literature briefs a little about the buying behavior functions in the Indian retail market. The frequent change in lifestyles with changing fashion preference of consumers is fed by the newer retail offerings coming from the organized retailers where apparel gets utmost importance. Keeping these changing facets in view, this study makes an attempt to identify the factors of the consumers' buying behavior that is influenced by retail apparel segment, and to assess the importance of each of them to consumers in selecting apparel from organized retail outlets.

Buying decisions -- Customers -- Retail -- Clothing industry.

The Internet has developed into a new distribution channel and online transactions are rapidly increasing. This has created a need to understand how the consumer perceives online purchases. The purpose of this study is to investigate factors affecting student consumer's buying decision when purchasing clothing online, and find out which factors impact on the online buying decision most. The research hypotheses are tested by using data collected from 200 students of Glyndwr University in UK. The identified factors economic orientation, convenience orientation, trust orientation and social influence have been examined. Among all of them, the first three were positively correlated with online attitude, whereas the result shown that social influence weakly associated with online attitude. The findings of this research can be drawn as implications for online clothing retailers so as to improve their understanding of the segment consumer group and increase their online marketing strategy effectiveness.

Indian retail is in an expansion spree and many companies are joining the retail landscape. After food and groceries segment apparel is the next large retail segment and the consumption of apparel is also very large in volume. Previously the manufacturing brands used to lead the apparel category in the early days and the penetration of the private label brands was very small. But now things have changed and private label brands are leading in every segment. In the apparel segment also many private label brands are leading the competition.Consumer buying behavior is mainly affected by many determinant factors and this paper aims at understanding and identifying the important determinant factors affecting the consumer buying behavior towards private label apparel. Private label brands are very successful because they offer many advantages to the consumers. Consumers are mainly affected by many internal factors like demographic, personality and lifestyle and many other factors while purchasing apparel. Consumers are also affected by many external factors like brand image, price, design and quality while buying private label apparel brands.