‘Perling Hou’ and ‘Zi Liing Hou’ who are in their 20s and 30s attracted attention as an important consumer group to lead the Chinese consumer market in the future. The purposes of this story were to investigate chinese young female consumer’ shopping orientation and clothing purchasing behaviors in the internet shopping mall, and to find the differences in clothing purchasing behaviors of consumer groups segmented by clothing shopping orientation. The results of this study can provide useful data to establish effective marketing strategies to many apparel companies targeting Chinese young female consumers.
The subjects of this study were a total 417 women in their 20s and 30s in Gillim-province, China and they were selected by convenience sampling method. The research method was a survey, and the questionnaire consisted of clothing shopping orientation subscale, clothing purchasing behaviors via internet, and demographic characteristics of the subjects. This study was conducted from 11th to 30th November 2016. For data analysis, descriptive statistics, frequency analysis, cross-tab analysis, x2 test, multiple response analysis, factor analysis, cluster analysis, one way variance analysis(ANOVA), and Duncan’s multiple range test were performed, using SPSS program(ver.21.0).
The results of the study were as follows. The clothing shopping orientation was derived with five factors(trend pursuit, pleasure pursuit, brand pursuit, economic pursuit, and convenience pursuit). Considering the mean score in clothing shopping orientation factors of Chinese young female consumers, convenience pursuit was highest among five factors, and trend pursuit appeared to be less than medium.
On the bases of clothing shopping orientation dimensions, Chinese young female consumers were classified into three groups(hedonic shopping group, ambivalent shopping group, and practical shopping group). These three groups showed many significant differences on clothing purchasing behaviors in the internet shopping mall.
When choosing a shopping mall, the hedonic shopping group and the ambivalent shopping group tended to prefer the specialty and cross-border shopping mall, while practical shopping group tended to prefer online general merchandise store. In the case of purchase motive, the hedonic shopping group considered product quality and trend as the main motive. The ambivalent shopping group seemed to consider trend and convenience of purchase, and the practical shopping group seemed to consider cheap price and time convenience as important motives. On purchasing items, the hedonic shopping group had a tendency to purchase fashion accessories and shoes more often, while the practical shopping group had a tendency to purchase underwear more often than other groups. On the purchase satisfaction and purchase intention of internet shopping mall, hedonic shopping group and ambivalent shopping group were higher than practical shopping group.
The conclusions from the results of this study were as follows. First Chinese young female consumers tended to pursue convenience most importantly when they purchase fashion product via internet. Therefore, internet retailers who are targeting Chinese young female consumers need to make purchasing and payment more convenient and save their time and efforts.
Secondly, marketing strategies according to the characteristics of each subcategories classified by clothing shopping orientation was needed. The hedonic shopping group preferred the specialty and cross-border shopping mall and considered product quality and trend as the main purchase motive. Therefore, for the hedonic shopping group, it will be effective to make up a specialty shopping mall based on products with unique designs that reflect the trend and superior quality, and it is desirable to have loyal customers through customized services. The ambivalent shopping group considered convenience of purchase and trend as important motive, compared to other groups, and they used more various product selection criteria and risk perception. Thus, the marketing strategy for this group should focuses on sophisticated designs to reflect fashion trends, and famous brand products with high quality. Practical shopping groups considered low price and convenience of time, possibility of comparison of several products as a major buying motive. Therefore, marketing companies targeting this group should focus on affordable and practical products and offer a variety of discounts. In addition, when organize shopping mall, a simple and time-saving configuration is considered effective.