Designing office shirt: an integrated approach

Abstract

PurposeGrounded theory, supported by leading designers, argues for an integrated approach covering end users and designers. However, no substantial work on apparel design has been done so far where a balance is maintained by combining the opinions of consumers and the designers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical framework for designing apparel considering both consumers’ opinions and fashion designers’ views.Design/methodology/approachAn algorithm is proposed for reducing attributes and their levels to carry out conjoint analysis and assign utilities to different attributes and their levels. After selecting the best three design combinations based on their utilities, the authors have arrived at optimum design combinations. Through Delphi method, the opinions of a few fashion designers about these selected design combinations have been collected for matching with optimum design.FindingsAn optimum design is suggested for a formal office shirt, for North Indian women, by integrating opinions of designers and consumers.Originality/valueAttribute and level reduction technique is an original contribution to the literature. Further, the authors’ approach to apparel design may provide a guideline to apparel manufacturers when designing their products. Knowledge of optimum design combinations gained through this approach may help apparel manufacturers and retailers in bringing efficiency in stock keeping unit management by keeping more stocks of apparel with optimum design combinations and thus ensuring a better return on investment made on their stocks.

Value-based nudging of ethnic garments: a conjoint study to differentiate the value perception of ethnic products across Indian Markets

“…It can be used when the goal of the research is to measure preferences for product features, to learn how changes to price, etc., affect demand for products or services and to forecast the likely acceptance of a product if brought to market (Bryan, 2013). In the retail and apparel sector, conjoint-based research has been performed to compare evaluative attributes that Chinese and Indian consumers utilize when purchasing denim jeans (Jin et al , 2010), to discover which design elements influence dress purchases and how age affects consumers' choices with regard to these elements (Zhou and Xu, 2019), to examine consumer preference for ethical fashion products by focusing on the importance of animal welfare attribute (Mohamed et al , 2020), to provide an analytical framework for designing apparel considering both consumers' opinions and fashion designers' views (Saha and Roy, 2012), to explore and examine the relative impact of product and channel attributes on luxury product shopping in the multichannel environment (Lee et al , 2020) and to measure the extent to which sustainable attributes can be used to characterize different clusters of consumers in an emerging market (De Abreu et al , 2022). In similar lines, it has also been recently used to estimate the consumer utility of the packaging design of yoghurt (Wang et al , 2022), to study the influence of product lifetime labelling on purchase decisions (Jacobs and Hörisch, 2022) or to understand the relative importance of ethical attributes when consumers in the US make wool apparel purchase decisions (Sneddon et al , 2014).…”

Conjoint analysis: the assumptions, applications, concerns, remedies and future research direction

“…Moreover, the other versions of conjoint analysis (Rao, 2014) can also be examined critically and compared. It will be interesting to use grounded theory technique with CA for better identification of most relevant attributes and its respective levels (Saha and Roy, 2012). The use of conjoint analysis under multimethod approach may address the concern of the researchers/reviewers on its epistemological aspects.…”

Strategy of textile design: Use of design methodology tools in the creative process

“…According to Roy (2012), different methods of product concept testing aim to identify optimum product designs. Conjoint analysis, which was introduced later in comparison to other traditional concept testing methods, has outperformed other methods of product concept testing.…”