A study on factors influencing the consumer buying decision making of the Sri Lankan fast fashion apparel market

Abstract

During the past twenty years, the global fashion apparel industry remarkably evolved with the expansion of the boundaries. The inclination of retailers for low cost, design flexibility, quality, and shorter lead times to the market has become the key strategies of the changing fluctuations and is known as fast fashion. Sri Lankan fashion retail apparel industry being novel, emerging, and conventional has a high potential for fast fashion which is not established well. For the development of fast fashion, examination of it through consumer perspective is important and yet underdeveloped. Hence, this study contributes to the limited literature on this context. Existing literature revealed four important factors that influence consumer buying decisions on fashion apparel as product dimension, individual dimension, social-influence dimension, and marketing dimension. The basic stimulus-response model by Kotler (1997), Perpetuating fast fashion consumption cycle by Simpson (2019), Consumer clothing purchase – decision-making model in traditional form by Chen (2017) was used to determine the relationship between the identified factors and the consumer buying decision making. Based on Saunders’s research onion model (2009), this study carries a positivism philosophy due to being highly structured and relying on quantifiable observation. The deductive approach was used to develop hypotheses for the study based on the conceptual framework. The mono method of study was utilized since only quantitative data were collected and analyzed. The data collected from 203 respondents were evaluated using SPSS software. Through the evaluation, it was proven that all the hypotheses are positive and correlate with consumer buying decision-making when considered on their own. The product dimension does not indicate a correlation when cumulated with other independent variables. This may be due to the multi-collinearity effect. Therefore, this dimension was excluded from the regression model. Moreover, the present research findings are in line with the literature review proving all four independent variables has an impact on consumer buying decision on fast fashion apparel within the local context."