"You don't buy clothes-you buy an identity" - the correlation between fashion brand and country-of-origin.

Tjandra, Nathalia Christiani; Omar, Maktoba; Williams, Jr

Abstract

This paper is part of a bigger qualitative study about the perception of country-of-origin from
consumers in different countries. The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore whether
country-of-origin information influences customers’ perception towards the brand of clothing
products. It has been suggested that in the fashion industry, design and trademarks represents
intangible assets which become an invaluable competitive advantage (Završnik & Mumel,
2007). Brand names are powerful indicators in estimating a products quality such as prestige
and durability (Dodds & Monroe, 1985; Keller, 2003; Render & O’Connor, 1976).
International fashion retailers are typically positioned in international markets by virtue of the
marketing effort and product offering, which contributes to their overall brand appeal (Moore,
1997; Wigley et al., 2005). The impact of this strategy is that many of the fashion brands are
transformed into international, universal or worldwide brands. However, consumers also
have better perceptions on clothes that have a brand name along with quality construction
(Davis, 1985). As country-of-origin has been used by customers to predict a products’ quality
and performance and to understand the rationality of their purchasing behaviour (Cai et al.,
2004; Olins, 2003; Muchbalcher et al., 1999), it could be argued that country-of-origin may
influence consumers’ evaluations on international branded fashion products. Therefore,
because the majority of international fashion retailers such as Zara, Mango, Next, GAP and
Arcadia Group have been outsourcing their products in the less industrialised countries
(Gereffi & Memedovic, 2003), it is fundamental to investigate whether country-of-origin
information influences consumers’ perception towards international clothing brands

Citation

Tjandra, N. C., Omar, M., & Williams, J. (2011). "You don't buy clothes-you buy an identity" - the correlation between fashion brand and country-of-origin

• Conference Name: Marketing Fields Forever: Academy of Marketing Annual Conference
• Start Date: Jul 5, 2011
• End Date: Jul 7, 2011
• Publication Date: 2011
• Deposit Date: Jun 9, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 9, 2015
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• ISBN: 978-0-9561122-34
• Keywords: Country-of-origin; fashion branding; brand names; fashion retailing; customer behaviour
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/id/eprint/8604