This research was designed to study whether consumer knowledge on organic cotton and relevant issues influences attitude toward and price acceptance of organic cotton clothing. The effect of consumer knowledge was also studied on the way consumers use product label information in purchasing organic cotton clothing. An online survey was developed to measure the variables including experimental choice‐based conjoint models for mandatory and auxiliary label specifications. Four hundred ninety‐eight people completed the survey. The results indicated that moderately and highly knowledgeable participants were more willing to buy organic cotton clothing at higher price points and they had more positive attitudes toward organic cotton clothing than low knowledgeable participants. The results suggest that differentially knowledgeable consumers may attend to different types of information provided on product labels to evaluate organic cotton apparel products. Providing product‐related information on product labels is essential; however, providing additional information on the benefits of using organic cotton and socially responsible business practices may improve consumers’ knowledge and acceptability of organic cotton apparel products.
). Consumers constantly gather information and store it in memory as knowledge, use this knowledge in evaluating and choosing products (Murray & Schlacter, 1990). Consumer knowledge may influence how consumers process product information provided by apparel manufacturers on hang tags and product labels and what products they buy. Labels and hang tags for apparel products were found to provide consumers with useful information on decision making (Chowdhary, 2003). With growing interests in sustainability issues and environmental concerns among apparel consumers, apparel manufacturers have provided information on their socially responsible practices including their commitment to the environment, fair labor, fair trade, and other social causes on product labels (Jana, 2007). Dickson (2000) studied the relationship between consumer knowledge and the intention to purchase apparel from socially responsible businesses and found that although the overall knowledge about apparel industry practices was fairly low, consumers who were more knowledgeable about the apparel industry were significantly more concerned about workers in clothing manufacturing businesses and showed greater support for socially responsible businesses. However, little research has been conducted regarding how consumer knowledge relates to the use of product information provided on labels when consumers purchase organic cotton apparel products. It is the intention of this study to understand the effect of consumer knowledge on the use of product labels to evaluate products in the context of purchasing organic cotton clothing. In addition, this study investigated how consumer knowledge influences attitude towards organic cotton clothing and price acceptance of organic cotton clothing.The concept of consumer knowledge in the field of consumer behavior has been applied to provide a theoretical framework for this study. McNeal and McDaniel (1981) state that the concept of knowledge is fundamental to understand consumer behavior theories including perceived risk, cognitive dissonance, social influences, new product adoption, self-concept, decision-making, and attitude formation and change. Rao and Sieben (1992) examined how prior knowledge on apparel quality and relevant issues relates to price acceptability and information examination patterns. In their study, low-knowledge subjects showed lower price limits than moderately or highly knowledgeable subjects when they were asked to indicate upper (high but acceptable) and lower (low but acceptable) price points for a blazer. It was also found that extremely knowledgeable subjects relied more on extrinsic product information in assessing product quality while moderately knowledgeable subjects used intrinsic information for 91
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