Fashion clothes quality for middle-class Russians

On the 16th of April 2008 in frames of team project, Laboratory “Market Management” of High school of marketing and business development (State University – High Economic School) and Fashion Industry Association presented the results of pilot research “Russian consumers’ perception of fashion clothes’ quality”.

Russian fashion-market representatives are sure they are producing qualified and fashionable clothes. “But why fashion and quality clothes don’t make as good selling as its producers would wish? There are 3 main questions: Do we produce wrong things? Do we offer our goods to wrong target buyers? Do we and our consumers speak different languages?” – formulated most important fashion-companies’ requests to researchers Maria Smorchkova, general director of The Association of fashion industry producers.

The results of the research showed that producers and buyers have different opinions what the quality fashionable clothes is. Both groups were to continue the phrase “clothes quality is…”. Analysis indicated most often mentioned characteristics of clothes quality:

- fabric and cut / tailoring / treatment,

- fitting to fashion tendencies and quality-price ratio,

- emotional / consumer / functional features,

- compliance with consumer tendencies (only by fashion-market representatives).

Consumers and producers points of view agreed only in one parameter – cut, tailoring, treatment: quality fashion clothes is well-cut, well-made and well-fitting the body.

“quality fashion clothes is made of good high-quality fabrics”, - think 46,7% of consumers and only 15,2% of producers;

“quality and fashionable means comfortable and cozy” – 33,6% of consumers against 18,2% of producers;

“Thing looks nice and attractive” – 12,5% of consumers against 6,1% of producers.

Consumer clothes quality perception differs by sex, age, income level and region. Women pay more attention to “fashion tendencies compliance”, “fabric and cut”, while men are more interested in “functionality” and “consumer characteristics”. The older the respondents the more attention they pay “cut quality”, “fashion tendencies compliance”. The higher the incomes the less interest in “tailoring” and “fabric” but more interest in “value” and especially “brand prestige”. “Fashion tendencies” are paid more attention in Moscow then in other Russian cities.

Consumers were offered to describe the idea of fashion clothes. The highest rate got the following characteristics:

“in accordance with my style”,

“fashionable details, accessories”,

“Never demode” (i.e. “fashion clothes means clothes which doesn’t go out of fashion (!))

For consumers’ esteem of rational advantage (cost of clothes) “clothes features” and “quality-price ratio” are equally important. The less important is parameter “produced under famous brand”. The fact that different characteristics got very close values shows that the term “fashion clothes quality” of consumers is not completely formed. (table 1).

Table 1. What consumers are ready to pay for.

But when consumers were asked to tell fashion clothes characteristics which they always ready to pay bigger price for, most chose “quality of clothes”. When they were asked about the feather they would not pay for, they answered “model’s universality”. So, consumers prefer universal clothes, think it must present if talking about fashion clothes but not ready to pay for this characteristic. The research showed that buyers consider quality of clothes the most important feature. But the term “quality of clothes” itself is not completely formed in consumers’ heads. That’s why companies must “decipher” their clients what they mean by quality of their product.

Besides, according to research’s results, we can say that “brand’s prestige” doesn’t influence much on consumer’s idea of clothes quality as well as “following fashion tendencies” declared by producers doesn’t increase sells of clothes.

What you should know about buyers:

- according to Comcon inquiry Russians buy less items of clothes but pay more then several years ago,

- the structure of buyers’ expenses has changed,

- the most buyers have a number of fundamental values, everybody wants care, respect, acceptance of his value and importance,

- “hobby groups” such as bloggs, “Classmates”, “My environment” have started to replace family and become a space of communication,

- teach your sellers to talk in buyers’ language, the basis for constructive dialogue is to ask a question which buyer wants to answer “yes”,

- to understand your brand’s power is to understand consumers’ wishes and expectations.

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