Customer decision making in fashion retailing: a segmentation analysis

Research into store image, market positioning and store choice has mainly been carried out in supermarkets or department stores and only a limited amount in speciality retailing. This study uses conjoint analysis to examine the way consumers choose where to purchase menswear fashion clothing, based on their perception and trade‐off of four attributes ‐ price, quality, selection and staff ‐ shown to be important in previous research. The results indicate that quality was the most important attribute to the respondents in this study. The paper concludes by analysing sub‐segments of shopping preferences for customers of Next for Men, a UK fashion retailer.