Investigating How Product Page Design Affects Clothing Fit Appraisal Online

Abstract

According to scholarly research, fit is the most salient evaluative criterion during the garment appraisal process (Abrahman-Murali and Littrell, 1995; Gupta, 2020; Makhanya and Mabuza, 2020). Nevertheless, garment returns are pervasive in the online fashion channel with garment fit being the primary reason for returns (He, Xu and Wu, 2020). This finding extrapolates that when shopping online, consumers are not provided with sufficient information about the fit of a garment and so, it is paramount that the provision of fit information on retailers websites improves. Accordingly, this thesis aims to examine how different types of apparel fit information, on a fashion retailer's product page, affect females perceived product fit diagnosticity, concerns with fit online and in turn, purchase intentions. The present study adopts a sequential-multi phase mixed-methods approach in order to investigate how different fit stimuli (verbal vs. visual) on a retailer's product page affect consumers' online garment fit appraisal process. Phase 1 of the research identifies the most/least popular styles of dresses commonly purchased by 343 UK females, aged 18-34, in order to ascertain appropriate product stimuli. Phase 2 explores the body shapes and physical garment fit appraisals of 30 UK females, aged 18-34, through body scanning sessions and semi-structured interviews. Finally, underpinned by the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, phase 3 undertakes a between-subjects factorial web-experiment to investigate how different combinations of visual (body shape: hourglass vs. diverse) and verbal (user-generated fit reviews: absence vs. presence) fit information, present on a product page, affect 400 female subjects' cognitive and behavioural responses. The results extrapolated that whilst visual fit information, in the form of diverse body shapes (vs. hourglass), enhanced consumers' cognitive garment fit evaluations, it did not increase purchase intentions. Alternatively, verbal fit information in the form of fit reviews (vs. absence) increased product fit diagnosticity, but had no significant effect on concerns with fit online or purchase intentions. This research has filled a gap in academic literature and provided a thorough understanding of how the inclusion of body shape stimuli and user-generated fit reviews affects consumers' fit appraisals online. In particular, the findings infer that visual garment fit information is more effective during the consumer's online garment fit appraisals. Although this study is limited to UK females aged 18-34, the findings have provided novel evidence for the role of body shape on the online garment fit appraisal, which has not yet been examined by prior research. Indeed, whilst various efforts have been made by scholars to identify female body shapes, these approaches remain largely academic and have failed to be applied and tested in a commercial context (Gill, 2015). Finally, the role of garment fit reviews on consumers' online fit appraisals has not yet been established.

Date of Award	21 Jan 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Gianpaolo Vignali (Supervisor), Helen Mccormick (Supervisor) & Rosy Boardman (Supervisor)