Date of Award

8-2004

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Family and Consumer Sciences

First Advisor

Dr. Barbara Frazier

Second Advisor

Dr. Marlene Breu

Third Advisor

Dr. Karen Blaisure

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Linda Dannison

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

This study compared the store attribute preferences of college-age apparel shoppers in Turkey with those of their United States counterparts. The American respondents were selected from a convenience sample of students from a Midwestern university. The Turkish respondents consisted of a convenience sample of undergraduate and graduate students from two urban universities. Ninety-six surveys were given in Turkey and 113 were given in the United States to currently enrolled female and male undergraduate and graduate students between the ages of 17 and 51, yielding 204 usable surveys at a 97 percent response rate. Twenty-one shopping preferences were included in the survey instrument, such as physical store characteristics, pricing, value for the money, payment, credit card acceptance, and return policies. General demographics were also collected. Hypothesis 1 stated that US respondents would perceive service attributes to be more important than Turkish respondents. Contrary to Hypothesis 1 Turkish respondents were found to rate several service attributes higher than US respondents. Hypothesis 2 stated that there would be no difference in the importance of store attributes for Turkish respondents based on gender. Hypothesis 2 was partially corroborated. There were significant results for only three of the nine store attributes tested.

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