Information sources and clothing

The intention of this article is to do an exploratory approach to consumer attitudes and clothing brands purchasing behavior of young Greeks and Portuguese’s. The article makes a comparative study between Greece and Portugal. Both countries are European, Mediterranean, and entered at the European Union at the same time. The purpose of the study is to analyze the attitudes of Mediterranean young consumers towards the clothing brands from the viewpoint of information sources, shopping behavior and purchasing choice criteria. Academic researches in this field have mainly used quantitative methods. We decided to use a qualitative method – focus groups - because of the richness of information that we could obtain. In this study we used college-age consumers. 

This target group is very sensitive to fashion clothing and a good percentage  of them purchase their own clothing. The focus groups were audio taped and videotaped recorded, transcribed and thematic analysis conducted. A number of themes emerged from the focus groups that were organized and exposed. Some of these elements have close associations within issues raised in the literature. In the first part of this article there is presented a discussion of the literature background about consumer purchasing behavior toward clothes. 

After that is presented the research questions and the description of the methodology used to examine these questions empirically. Finally is presented the major findings of this study and the discussion of the results. Implications for strategy development and areas for further research are presented at the end of the article