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This case study investigates the consumer perception of Tactel that has resulted from Invista's marketing strategy of generating brand recognition for Tactel and considers whether the consumer understanding of the product and its benefits correlate to the intentions of Invista.

Interviews, questionnaire and consumer garment comparisons test.

It was found from interviews conducted with representatives of companies involved in a UK based supply chain producing Tactel lingerie during both the Autumn/Winter (A/W) 2000‐2001 and A/W 2003‐2004 seasons that all representatives agreed that consumers do not understand the meaning of Tactel and do not really understand its benefits. The results from the consumer questionnaire confirm this view as consumers were not able to identify key words associated with Tactel effectively. It was found from the consumer garment comparisons test, however, that although consumers may not be sure about the particular attributes of Tactel and its benefits awareness of the brand has increased following a very focused brand promotion since A/W 2000‐2001. Whilst Tactel may not mean anything to consumers, it is now becoming an integral part of consumers' vocabulary in the A/W 2003‐2004 season as Invista had intended.

A useful insight into consumer recognition of a fibre brand.

Given an increasingly volatile and competitive fashion environment, the purpose of this paper is to qualitatively explore current consumer behaviour and psychological perspectives of luxury in women's undergarment fashion purchasing, with specific examination of whether this under‐investigated area of discrete or inconspicuous fashion appraisal is consistent with other luxury purchases.

The study employs an interesting methodological approach using multiple qualitative techniques including research interviews, group forums, and narrative capture, to investigate women's undergarment purchasing in a changing fashion environment in relation to the issues of branding, self‐image, perceived self‐image, motivational perspectives, and consumer behaviour, as identified by 119 female consumers aged between 18 and 60.

This study supports in part previous research that indicated consumer behaviour is determined by the congruency between the consumer's self‐image and the consumer's image of brands, although early research suggested this only applied to conspicuous products and social consumption. The current study confirms the self‐image link in the area of inconspicuous fashion, and strongly relates inconspicuous products consumed privately to self‐esteem and perceived sexy self.

The findings indicate that for intimate apparel marketing to be effective and credible, the marketed fashion items, and actions taken by designers, and retailers need to be consistent with the consumer's personal style, value perceptions, and self‐image.

This research examines several neglected areas in fashion and consumption research, and contributes to our understanding of key motivational elements important in the consumption of inconspicuous fashion, and the relationship of self‐image to inconspicuous consumption.

In addition to the psychological differentiation of older women, ageing has numerous effects on the breast, influencing the volume, density and constitution of the tissue. It is currently unknown how these changes may affect bra requirements and bra consumer behaviour. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors of importance in bras in a cohort of women aged 45 to 65 years, whilst considering purchasing behaviour, brand loyalties and self‐image.

Following a grounded theoretical perspective, this study was exploratory in nature, including a mixture of five semi‐structured interviews and two focus groups with women, aged 45 to 65 years, to discuss bra habits, considerations, and influential factors of purchasing. Data were content analysed with additional frequency analysis.

The paper provides five key dimensions within which older women focus their attentions when purchasing bras. These are aesthetics, comfort, practicalities of bra purchase, breast support and psychological aspects. Participants purpose their bra requirements to be multifaceted and changing with increasing age.

Bra manufacturers and distributers may need to consider these factors when marketing towards an older population of women, to optimise products and subsequent sales.

The paper advances the literature by providing fundamental information on the key areas of consideration for older bra consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the uplifting effect of a prototype brassiere that the author developed in Shanghai, China, for Chinese adult females in their early twenties.

The prototype brassiere was designed according to the four breast shapes of Chinese adult females. In total, 40 breast‐related measurement items were used to quantify the body sizes of 20 subjects, who were measured both with and without the brassieres.

The results of the comparison showed significant differences in breast position, the degree of sagging, the distance between the breasts, and the bottom area of the breasts between the two contexts. This study confirms the uplifting effect of the prototype brassiere, which can produce cleavage and elevate breasts.

The findings are based on an experimental method that quantifies the uplifting effect of the prototype brassiere using body measurement data obtained from local women in Shanghai, China. They provide empirical criteria for manufacturing brassieres to the Chinese intimate apparel industry, which lacks a standardized measurement system.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how brassiere manufacturers develop new designs for bra products, suitable for individual consumers, through consumer codesign.

New product design that relies on conjoint analysis algorithms can depict multidimensional attribute profiles, such that consumers' choice behavior reflects their preferences and overall judgment of the profiles. This statistical technique provides a means to codesign and customize bra products and thereby enhance the overall bra design process.

Bra products codesign suggests goals such as attractive appearance, shoulder strap style, vivid/mild color, elegance/sexy lace, comfort/practicality, fabric, lining, comfort/attractive appearance, neckline design, comfort/excellent function cut, sewn cups, and generous quantities. The most preferred combination of attributes for all respondents is a cotton/cotton blend fabric, seamless bra that offers a detachable shoulder strap, lavender color, a two‐strap style, lace details, and a low‐cut plunge neckline. The paper illustrates consumers' bra awareness attributes, codesign approach, and individual optimum individualized bra designs.

The results provide a useful source of information for product managers, who should consider the use of codesign to design the best products for individual consumers and decrease the risk of design failure, as well as promote consumer loyalty and satisfaction toward the product.

The paper provides a unique method to understand the new product codesign structure and make bra product design decisions that integrate optimum individualized design.

Properly conceived, conducted and interpreted, motivation research can be an extremely powerful management tool, designed to help the manufacturer or advertiser to sell more goods. Its aim is to expose the market situation, explain it and suggest courses of action which will lead to desired changes. It is a way of looking at a problem rather than a collection of specialist techniques and is strictly practical. Hence it can be used alongside other market research tools for the solution of marketing problems and can be applied to a wide range of business activities. Much of its development has been in the advertising field but it can also help in the formulation of production policy, solving packaging problems and marketing operations. It is examined here in all these contexts. The idea of motivation research, the reasons for its use and the techniques by which to apply it are discussed, as well as the pitfalls that are likely to occur. New and imaginary case studies are used throughout to illustrate points. A review of the subject literature is included.

In contrast to outer apparel, academic research has neglected consumer behaviour for intimate apparel or lingerie. It is argued that within this category the bra deserves singular research attention. This paper presents the results of exploratory research designed to explore in depth the bra consumer decision process. The key findings indicate a highly involved consumer who is motivated by a complex range of interlinked factors, and a consumer who desires to be brand loyal in order to enjoy a less extensive decision process, but who is prevented from doing so by high levels of perceived risk and “obstructive” marketing. The authors offer directions for future empirical research based on the consumer behavioural constructs of involvement, perceived risk and the self‐concept. Implications for marketing management are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and identify the salient effects of apparel evaluativ1e cues in order to enrich our understanding of consumer preferences and behaviour in two different socio-cultural contexts – Canada from the west and China of the east.

Online and paper questionnaires were used to collect data from Canada and China. Based on the prior research, 14 hypotheses were developed, and SPSS statistical analyses were used for this study.

According to the findings, Canadian and Chinese participants used price as an indicator of product quality and/or monetary sacrifice. Overall, the consumers from both countries were more concerned about the garment fit and style than brand name and country of origin. It is imperative for fashion practitioners to prioritise their resources and focus more on product research/design and prototype development. Fit, comfort and fabric were strongly correlated except in the “fit and comfort” of the Canadian sample. In addition, durability, ease of care and wardrobe coordination play a relatively less significant clothing evaluative role than many other product cues.

There are relatively few research studies have focussed on apparel consumer behaviour, and the salient impact of product-evaluative cues – particularly from a cross-national perspective. This study covers a wide array of important evaluative cues, and provides meaningful insights to both fashion academicians and practitioners. This is one of the few studies provide an in-depth and comprehensive report on the role and effects of apparel product cues.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relationship between perceived brand quality (PBQ), customer perceived value (CPV) and disposition to pay a higher price (DHP) for a product. Such an assessment also seeks to determine if consumer involvement and brand performance measurements have moderating effects on this relationship.

Data from a sample of n = 1,029 purchasers of six different product categories were analysed. The respondents evaluated a product with items based on involvement profile scales. The chosen brands were evaluated using perceived quality, value and brand performance items. Respondents were also asked if a higher price for the chosen product/brand would be paid. Structural modelling was implemented. To corroborate moderating effects, a nested comparison invariance test for structural weights was used.

PBQ has a direct effect on CPV but not on DHP. CPV has a mild effect on DHP. Involvement and brand performance moderating effects were confirmed.

Brand quality is assumed as a strategy to achieve a higher price disposition through customer value in contrast with previous empirical literature that puts the price as a sign of quality. DHP is argued as a measurement to indicate “superior customer perceived value”. This variable would be different from and more difficult to achieve than CPV.

The purpose of this paper is to utilize the spontaneous brain potentials as an index to quantifying the consumers’ inner emotions, and propose an objective method to obtain the clothing recognitions of consumers by only monitoring brain activities.

Different styles of men’s casual jacket were studied as a case. The research included four phases: first, stimuli samples were constructed by clustering algorithm. Second, self-report for the perception of stimuli samples were recorded by self-assessment manikin. Third, real-time brain potentials while viewing stimuli samples were recorded and analyzed. Finally, the output data were compared with the classical research achievements of visual evoked emotional ERPs to examine the effectiveness.

The results indicated significant difference in main effect of different emotional categories which was identified a corresponding relationship between the emotional trigger and the emotional reaction, of which the early components were the typical components that provided the major physiology characteristics for emotional fashion design. The middle components could be used as the assist reference indexes. The negative stimuli were first noticed because its shorter processing times and larger amplitudes. The comparison confirmed that the proposed method was capable of quantifying cognitive activities of consumers by only monitoring brain activities and then transferred the analyzed data to the design references.

The results quantifying the qualities of consumers’ emotional preference for men’ casual jackets based on the neural mechanism of human brain, which could eliminate the systematic biases associated with the uses of words and semantic comprehension in self-report methods. The proposed method may help to enrich and complete the sentimental fashion design for the cognitive experience of consumer oriented. Moreover, it also could be beneficial to optimize design process and improve efficiency and core competitiveness for clothing producers.