A Study on Perception Towards Branded Apparels Amongst Youth in Tricity: Research Design

Introduction

Apparels and accessories retailing is the largest segment of organized retailing in India. To remain competitive and profitable in present marketplace, the apparel industry must continue to expand its capability to fulfil the needs and wants of customers, its overall retail picture has shown long-term growth with the increase of income, and increased exposure to foreign brands. In last few years, apparel market has seen changes with respect to dressing design, style, usage of branded items and choice of fibers and awareness of trends. According to an article in Economic Times, the market of branded apparels in India may rise to Rs. 250K Cr. by 2020.

Consumer Buying Behaviour:

For consumers brands can simply choose, promise a particular quality level, reduce risk or trust. Brands are built on product itself, the marketing activity and its use by customers as well as others or non-users. Brands reflect the consumer's complete experience they have with products or apparel. Also, Brands play an important role in determining the marketing efforts such as advertising effects and channel placement. Thus, Brands manifest their impact at three primary levels- customer-marketing, product-market, and financial market. The value accrued by these various benefits is often called Brand equity.

Consumer buying behaviour is the study of individuals and the procedures they use to select, secure, use, and dispose of products, services, experiences, or ideas to satisfy needs and the impacts that these processes have on the consumer and society Consumer behaviour is gradually a part of strategic planning for the upcoming investment and growth of any industry. Retail industry or specifically to say apparel industry is no exception, Consumers can either be subjective or objective, testing the persuasion of brand names. Consumers may select specific products/brands not only because these products deliver the functional or performance pay backs projected, but also because products can be used to express consumers' personality, social status or association or to fulfil their internal psychological requirements, such as the need for change or freshness.

Consumer behaviour denotes to the emotional and mental process and the observable behaviour of consumers during search of product, purchasing process and post consumption of a product or service. Consumer behaviour includes study of how people buy, what they buy, when they buy and why they buy.

Literature review

1. Kevin Lane Keller, Donald R. Lehmann (2004) opines that branding has emerged as a top management priority in the last decade due to the growing realization that brands are one of the most valuable intangible assets that firms have. Driven in part by this intense industry interest, academic researchers have explored a number of different brand-related topics in recent years, generating scores of papers, articles, research reports, and books. It identifies some of the influential work in the branding area, highlighting what has been learned from an academic perspective on important topics such as brand positioning, brand integration, brand equity measurement, brand growth, and brand management. The research also outlines some gaps that exist in the research of branding and brand equity and formulates a series of related research questions. Choice modelling implications of the branding concept and the challenges of incorporating main and interaction effects of branding as well as the impact of competition are discussed.
2. P.S. Venkateswaran, N. Ananthi, U. Geetha, Binith Muthukrishnan. K (2011) study the influence of brand loyalty on apparel's buying behaviour of consumers at Dindigul. Rising costs of living around the world cause consumers to stretch their incomes more thinly, meaning necessities are being weighed against apparel. Fashion must have value and purpose and truly resonate to the consumer. Strong brands with consistent powerful messages can create loyalty and a sense of worth that transcends the burden of choice. Branding may communicate several meanings to the consumer, which include the attribute, benefit, value, culture, personality, and user. In addition, branding will indicate the importance of loyalty, awareness, quality, association and others.
3. Namita Rajput, Subodh Kesharwani and Akanksha Khanna(2012) study the relationship between consumers’ decision-making styles and their choice between domestic and imported brand clothing is investigated using a sample of Indian consumers. The researcher analyze the significance of demographic profile of consumers affecting the purchase decision of branded garments and to observe from gender perspective the consumer awareness about different apparel brands available in the Indian market and also to find out whether there is a significant difference in total expenditure on branded apparels done by males vise- a - versa females. The results exhibit no significant differences in the brand awareness, shopping frequency and shopping expenditure between males and females.
4. Md. Mazedul Islam and Adnan Maroof Khan (2013) contend that the preference of consumers for readymade branded apparels is fast changing which is caused by the creation of personality and status with the quality and comfort they deliver. Customers have become highly brand conscious presently. Hence, brand image is a significant factor in choosing the product or brand to buy. Driven by the competitive environment in fashion business, marketers have realized that creating a favourable brand image is a key to win larger market share in its market niche. An understanding of brand image can provide better foundation for developing a more effective marketing program. The understanding of consumers’ desires, behaviour and of the purchase process of fashion products is extremely important to the design of fashion products collections as well as to the placement of these products in the market. A fashion product must satisfy the demands of the target customers, so the main idea (message) behind the brand (sender) must reach the consumer (receiver).
5. Md. Mazedul Islam, Muhammad Mufidul Islam, Abu Yousuf Mohammad Anwarul Azim, Md. Russel Anwar and Md. Mijan Uddin (2014) propound that the garment manufacturing sector earned $19 billion in the year June 2012, one of the impoverished nation's biggest industries. Bangladesh is the world's second largest exporter of clothing after China. Readymade garments make up 80 percent of the country's $24 billion in annual exports. Consultancy firm McKinsey & Company said that Bangladesh could double its garments exports in the next 10 years. Definitely it is news that our local apparel products are trying to satisfy the need of local customers along with strengthening the countries economical growth. So, knowing the customers desired requirements when they purchase such local apparel brand products are mandatory to better clothing’s brand developments. Brand management holds the key in the modern markets, particularly in case of Bangladeshi local apparel markets. Bangladeshi people are very traditional in clothing’s choice.
6. Syed Tabrez Hassan, Bilal H Hurrah, Amit Lanja (2014) opines that as in this competition era, from business point of view, we must be aware about the customer needs & wants & what a consumer expects from a company. We should have this information or a customer database if we want to stay in the market and to develop a competitive edge in the market. After conducting this study we must be able to understand what customers want from a brand, why they switches to other brand, what are the factors which force them to purchase branded apparels. By analyzing these, company can formulate the strategies as per the customer needs and deliver them the products which consumer wants from the company, which will be profitable for the company.
7. Rizwana Begum and K.S. Sarala (2016) feel that brand positioning is the key of marketing strategy. A strong brand positioning directs marketing strategy by explaining the brand details. Effective brand positioning is contingent upon identifying and communicating a brand’s uniqueness, differentiation and verifiable value. Positioning is the base for developing and increasing the required knowledge and perceptions of the customers. In this background, the present study aims at examining the impact of attributes of brand positioning on consumer purchase decision for men apparel brands in Udupi.
8. Prof. Lakshmi Narayana. K, Dr. Sreenivas D L (2016) investigates the relationship between the factors which affects the buying behaviour towards branded apparels in Bangalore city. The Data has been collected from the respondents who presently living in Bangalore city and regular buyers of branded apparels. The study offers insights and evidence about the relationship between the variables which impact consumer buying behaviour for branded apparels. In the study under consideration, the results indicate that there is significant relationship between reference group and purchase intention also promotion, Store attributes, product attributes, Income of the respondent and occupation have positive significant relation between consumer buying behaviour.

The relationship between consumers’ decision-making styles and their choice between branded and non-branded clothing is investigated using a sample of consumers of Chandigarh only. The research investigates youth of Chandigarh to examine if any factor dominates in their buying behaviour for apparel. In addition, consumer attributes (i.e., apparel involvement, brand consciousness, reference group, social class, and other factors) and personal characteristics were investigated separately and in relation to the purchase behaviour of youth.

Objectives

1. To understand the concept of perception and its role in influencing consumer behavior
2. To measure the perception of branded apparels amongst 18-24 years old customers in tri city.

Research Methodology

This study is undertaken to assess the buying pattern of consumers in Chandigarh city. Data is collected from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data is collected through questionnaire which consisted of two sections and secondary data is collected from books, journals, websites, etc. The questionnaire consisted of four factors on the basis of which the questionnaires is divided. This research is descriptive in nature with a target sample size of 40+ respondents. The study covered consumers taste and preference towards the branded apparels, impact of sales promotional and Measures and buying patterns of consumers in Chandigarh city.

Methodology is the most essential for the research work. It is also called as main body or part of the research format. In this chapter the researcher has been described the Research design the method adopted for the sources of data, Selections of subjects, Selection of the test items, Scoring of the question, Administration of the schedule and test items.

Research Design

Richey says that (2007) a Research design handles with the matters such as selecting participants for the Research and making for data collection and the activities that compact the research process.

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Research designs basically are of two types as shown in the following figure.

As the above figure research design are of Two Types i.e. of conclusive research design and exploratory design.

Exploratory research design:

According Burns and Bush (2006) exploratory research design is referred as gathering Information in an informal and unstructured manner. The exploratory research design is proper when the researchers knows small about the opportunity or issue. Exploratory research design is not limited to one specific paradigm but may use either qualitative or quantitative approaches.

Conclusive research design:

Conclusive research design is defined by Malhatra, (1999) as a research designed to assist the decision maker in deciding, evaluating and choosing the better action course in a given situation. Conclusive research may be either descriptive or causal research design respectively. Casual research is referred as the research design where the major emphasis is on deciding a cause and effect relationship. In fact the causal relationship could be due to other factors specifically when dealing with perceptions and attitudes of people. On the other hand Brannon(1992) described that descriptive research as the name suggests describes descriptive data about the population being studied and does not try to set up casual relationship between events. It is used to explain happening, an event or to offer accurate and factual description of the population being studied. In a descriptive study the things are measured as they are. This study makes use of descriptive research design. Descriptive research design needs a clear specification of what, who, where, when, how and why the research is to be done formal design is needed to insure that description encloses all phases (Mohan, 2007). The main deference between descriptive and exploratory research is that unlike, exploratory research, descriptive research formulates a hypothesis in advance. Kirsch G (1992) say that who, what, where, when and how questions are answered by descriptive research. Descriptive research deals with everything that can be measure or counted. The present research study is descriptive in nature because it analysis in detail the variation of levels of Emotional Intelligence, Aggression, Burnout and Stress Vulnerability of cricket players at University level with respect to the role of the players.

Hypothesis:

On the basis of the literature gone through, research findings and the scholar’s own understanding of the problem the following hypothesis are formulated.

1. It is hypothesized that there will be significant difference in the level of emotional intelligence among the three groups of cricketer viz. batsmen, fast bowlers and spin bowlers.
2. It is hypothesized that the fast bowlers will have more aggression level in compare to batsmen and spin bowlers.
3. It is hypothesized that Fast bowler will have more burnout level in compare to other two groups.
4. It is further hypothesized that the batsmen will be more prone to stress vulnerability.

The research design allows researchers to isolate causes and effect, and determines the effect of several marketing variables on further variables. The variable causing the change is the independent variable, while the one which is being altered as a result is the dependent variable.

This research utilizes two different sets of data, that is, primary and secondary data. Secondary data has been collected through marketing journals, former research articles and studies, while primary data has been collected from the research sample by means of the questionnaire.

The questionnaire has been used as the primary instrument for the purpose of data collection from the sample. The answers were then analyzed and evaluated through various statistical tests for the purpose of this research.

The sample population selected for this research includes students of Greenwich University, as well as staff members. The appropriate sample size was chosen through a sample size calculator out of the Greenwich University population that included both staff members and students numbering 50 individuals.