Consumers' apparel purchasing behavior in Croatia

Brief outline: 
This research investigated consumer apparel purchasing behavior in Croatia. It explored patterns of consumer behavior and identified the impacts of various factors on purchasing outcomes, which may help companies adjust their business strategies. The goal of this research was to identify factors that had the strongest impacts on money spent by consumers on clothing and identify relationships between various antecedent variables. Analyzed antecedent variables included fashion consciousness, consumer fashion innovativeness, prestige sensitivity, shopping motivations, consumer impulsiveness/compulsiveness, the importance of clothing attributes for making purchases, consumer preferences for buying foreing apparel brands, the impact of retail mix on purchases (like the impacts of fashion displays, mannequin displays, signages, music, layout). This research also took into account the impacts of various demographic variables, including gender, age, family income, profession of a respondent and number of houshold members. Analyzed outcome variables included number of clothing items purchased, money spent in the store, shopping frequency, unplanned purchases. Data were collected by using telephone survey using the sample of 300 respondents in Croatia. Collected data were analyzed by using regression models, cluster and factor analyses, ANOVA. Research results were the factors that influenced consumer apparel purchases. The results contributed to the existing apparel consumer behavior literature and also yielded important managerial implications in the field of clothing industry.