Journal of Business Administration and Management Sciences Research Vol. 3(6), pp.

101-105, June, 2014

Available online athttp://www.apexjournal.org
ISSN 2315-8727© 2014 Apex Journal International

Full Length Research

Consumer Perception of Branded Garments in Indian

Apparel Industry
Jafar Ikbal Laskar* and Haidar Abbas
Business Administration, AMU Malappuram Centre, Kerala
Accepted 6 June, 2014

In the age of identity crisis and need for differentiation, everyone is after uniqueness; particularly how
one wishes to appear. India is a global market for fashion apparels and there is a cut throat competition
existing among brands. Companies are rigorously working on creating high awareness and a positive
attitude towards their brands in order to grab the larger pie of the market. Consumer awareness and its
perception is all that may determine the kind of attitude a customer may have towards any particular
brand. Therefore, it becomes necessary to study the consumer awareness about various apparel
brands (sources of awareness as well as the extent of awareness), their perception about these brands
and the factors that affect their perception. This study aims to focus particularly on the aforementioned
aspects regarding apparel brands in the context of Indian Market.

Keywords: Consumer Perception, Brands, Apparel industry, Branded garments.

INTRODUCTION

In consumer behaviour, perception refers to the way
stimuli are interacted and integrated by the consumer.
Although there are numerous definitions in literature
explaining perception from a consumer behaviour
perspective, the one used by Walters and Bergiel (1989)
provides particular clarity on the topic: “The entire
process by which an individual become aware of the
environment and interprets it so that it will fit into his/her
frame of reference”.
A brand is a perceived image that resides in the minds
of consumers. It is the aura that surrounds a product or
service that communicates its benefits and differentiates
it from its competitors for the consumer. Thus a brand is
been defined as, “an identifiable product, service, person
or place, augmented in such a way that the buyer or user
perceives relevant unique added values that match their
needs most closely” (Caldwell and Freire, 2004).
Studying the concept of branding specifically in the
context of the Indian Apparel Industry becomes more
*Corresponding author. Email: haideramu@gmail.com
interesting when one finds its overwhelming presence in
the economic life of the country. Previous studies report it
as one of the earliest industries to come into existence in
the country. Apart from providing one of the basic
necessities of life, the apparel industry also plays a
pivotal role through its contribution to industrial output,
employment generation, and the export earnings of the
country. Currently, it contributes about 14% to industrial
production, 4% to the GDP, and 17% to the country’s
export earnings. It provides direct employment to over 35
million people.
Consumer may get information about apparel brands
through various sources like advertisements (print /
electronic), shelf presence, internet or the people around
(family members, relatives, friends etc). Companies are
not only concerned about these sources of consumer
awareness but also about their relative awareness regarding
different aspects of the brands (like price, quality,
availability etc) as it is their extent of awareness which
lead them to believe them about certain brands in a
particular way (Apaydın and Köksal, 2011). Once the
companies know about the consumers’ perception about
their brands, they try to determine which factors are
 102 J. Bus. Admin. Manage. Sci. Res
responsible for a certain level of the consumer perception
(favourable and unfavourable).
LITERATURE REVIEW
Branding consist of Brand knowledge that is the
information related with the brand stored in consumers’
memory and it has two aspects; brand awareness and
brand image (Ailawadi and Keller, 2004). Brand
awareness is the ability of a potential buyer to recognize
or recall a particular brand (Keller, 1993). Brand image is
consumers’ perception about the brand (Veeck and
Burns, 1995; Suri and Monroe, 2003). Customers depend
on their brand knowledge to decide among competing
brands (O’Cass and Lim, 2002). Brand loyalty, a function
of psychological processes, is the consumers’ biased
behavioural response (re-purchase, referral) expressed
over time with respect to one or more alternative brands
out of a set of brands (Rundle-Thiele and Bennett, 2001).
Consumers’ perceptions about a brand are positively
enhanced with increasing levels of perceived quality and
lowered with increasing levels of sacrifices they feel.
Consumers’ judgments of quality, for example, are likely
to be affected by the quality suggested by such extrinsic
cues as brand name and price (Zeithaml, 1988).
Researchers have also identified brand name, price,
store name/image, and country of origin as extrinsic cues
to (quality) perceptions (Teas and Agarwal, 2000).
Having a number of varieties and options (Batra et al.,
2000) consumers prefer brands that they perceive as
originating from abroad more than they do local brands
and that preference is linked not only to perceived quality
but also to social status (Alden et al., 1999). Consumers
may prefer foreign brands because of associations of
higher prestige. Global brands are often seen by
consumers as brands that convey worldwide citizenship,
when consumed (Dawar and Parker, 1994). To sum up,
one can say that consumers in developing countries tend
to evaluate global brands in terms of better product,
service quality and symbols of social status (Holt et al.,
2004).
Several researchers have established the importance
of perceived quality, price-consciousness, pre-purchase
information, perceived utility, positioning and
advertisement in influencing the buying behaviour of the
consumers. This can be attributed on account of level of
involvement which reflects individual basic values, goals
and self-concept. Therefore, the factors which influence
consumer perception about brands include socio-cultural
factors (Becker, Grossman and Murphy,1992) like social
class, reference group, family etc. (Schiffman, Kanuk and
Hansen, 2008), country of origin (Elliott and Cameron,
1994), consumer orientation (ethnicity), quality
certification (Casadesús, and Karapetrovic, 2005),
perceived quality, prestigious image (Steenkamp, Batra
and Alden 2003; Balabanis and Diamantopoulos, 2011),
comparative prices (Khouja, and Smith, 2007),
expectations about performance (Katona, 1958),
endorsements, and sponsorship.
Objectives
The objectives of this study include the following:
A) To know the awareness about the brands
i. Sources of awareness
ii. Awareness regarding selected aspects of brands
B) Consumer perception about selected aspects of
brands
C) Factors affecting the consumer perception about
brands
Hypotheses
Based on the objective of this study, the following
hypotheses were formulated.
H1: Age wise, respondents don’t differ as far as the
influence of the reference groups (family and friends) on
their perception about the brands is concerned.
H2: Age wise, respondents don’t differ as far as the
influence of their inclination towards unbranded products
on their perception about the brands is concerned.
H3: Age wise, respondents don’t differ as far as the
influence of their personal experience on their perception
about the brands is concerned.
H4: Age wise, respondents don’t differ as far as the
influence of comparative prices of various brands on their
perception about the brands is concerned.
H5: Age wise, respondents don’t differ as far as the
influence of advertisements/sponsorships/endorsements
on their perception about the brands is concerned.
METHODOLOGY
A single-cross sectional descriptive research design was
undertaken to investigate the issues of enquiry in the
present study. The data have been collected using a
structured closed ended questionnaire. There were 255
numbers of responses of questionnaire collected using
convenience sampling (non-probability sampling). The
sufficiency of sample size has been derived from the
previous studies where the sample size for the similar
studies ranges from 120 to more than 500. Collected data
was analyzed with the help of SPSS 20.0. The useful
information was extracted using several descriptive
statistics (%, mean and standard deviation) and One Way
ANOVA.
 Laskar and Abbas 103

Table 1. Sources of Awareness

Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation

People Around 3.2235 .98064 Internet 3.6627 .78117
Advertisements 4.4667 .76711 Shelf Presence 4.0627 .97002

Table 2. Aspects of a Brand.

Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation

Price 3.5685 .400287 Variety 1.3335 .512147
Quality 4.588 .816497 Status 2.6665 .032047
Availability 1.9805 .248011 Fashionability 1.391 .488673

Table 3. Perception about various aspects of favourite Brand.

Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation

Reasonable Price 1.9333 1.05343 Variety 3.7098 .65965
Quality 4.2471 .77722 Status 4.2000 .76539
Availability 2.4980 .91735 Fashionability 3.8039 .60248

Data Analysis and Interpretation Perception about Brands

More than 3/4th (81.2%) of respondents are male. Also,
majority of the respondents (72.2%) are falling in the age
group of 20-30. Of this population, majority (66.3%) is
having qualification of above graduation. Moreover,
nearly half of the respondents (48.2%) are having
average monthly income of below 10 thousands.
RESULTS
Awareness of Consumers about brand
Consumer awareness has been analysed on two
dimensions namely sources of consumer awareness and
the level of consumer awareness with respect to some
selected salient aspect of one’s favourite brand using
descriptive statistics (µ & σ).
Sources of Awareness about Brands: Advertisement
(mean value 4.4667) and shelf presence (mean value
4.0627) are more effective than other sources of
awareness about brands like family, friends and also
internet. The lesser value of σ for advertisement (.76711)
shows the representativeness of its mean (Table 1).
Awareness about selected aspects of brands:
Respondents are more aware about price and quality of
their favourite brands as compared to other aspects like
availability, variety, status etc (Table 2). The standard
deviation of each component also supports the
representativeness of the two means.
Pursuing the second objective of this study, the
researcher asked the respondents to rate their perception
about various aspects of their favourite brand. Table 3
shows that brands will not be available at reasonable
price, so its mean value (least) says the rest. It is also not
surprising that quality and status are at the same level (µ)
and standard deviation values for both of these two
aspects confirm the representativeness of their mean
value. People perceive that wearing a brand can give
them a sign of good status and can satisfy them on
quality standards too.
Factors affecting the consumer perception about
brands
Reliability is the degree to which an assessment tool
produces stable and consistent results. Here, it is
measured using the Cronbach’s co-efficient and its value
(0.901) shows that scale is reliable (Malhotra, 2008). For
validity of this scale, researcher has relied upon the
content validity.
Analysis of variance or ANOVA is a method of testing
the null hypothesis that several group means are equal in
proportion, by comparing the sample variance estimated
from the group means to that estimated within the
groups.
Based on the p values (p<0.05) from Table 4, the null
hypotheses H1, H2 and H5 related with equality of effects
of the factors (people, inclination towards unbranded
 104 J. Bus. Admin. Manage. Sci. Res

Table 4. ANOVA Results.

Df F Sig.
Between Groups 3 4.970 .002
People Within Groups 251
Total 254

Between Groups 3 3.508 .016

Inclination Within Groups 251
Total 254

Between Groups 3 1.505 .214

Experience Within Groups 251
Total 254

Between Groups 3 1.575 .196

Price Within Groups 251
Total 254

Between Groups 3 3.379 .019

Advertisements Within Groups 251
Total 254

products and advertisements) on consumer perception
about brands irrespective of their age groups are
rejected. This means that on the basis of the selected
sample and their responses, one can never claim that
these factors equally affect the consumer perception
about brands irrespective of their age. Similarly, on the
basis of the p values (p>0.05), the researcher failed to
reject rest of the two hypotheses i.e. H3 & H4 related with
equality of effects of the factors (price and experience
with the brands) on consumer perception about brands
irrespective of their age groups. This means that on the
basis of the selected sample and their responses, one
can never claim that these factors affect differently the
consumer perception about brands irrespective of their
age.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Researcher has seen that advertisement and shelf
presence are the main source of brand awareness. Firms
which are investing in other means should introspect their
strategies. One can also interpret that majority of the
respondents think that brand is more costly and it is not
available everywhere. It is also seen that price and
experience have an impact on their perception about
brand; it may be recommended that improving
advertisement leads to better experience in the market.
Limitations and Directions for future research
One of the major limitations of this work is that this
dissertation restricts itself to the perceptions about one’s
favourite brand only in the Indian garment market. Other
limitations include the method of determination of sample
size, use of convenience sampling, data collection
method, time and resource constraints. The researcher
expects that if these limitations are taken into
consideration in future, the studies may come up with
some more refined results.
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