Browsing by Subject "vaatetusyritykset"

In this study I define quality of clothing and analyze how clothing companies tell about quality of their products to their customers. In the first part of the study I concentrate to clear up what quality in the context of clothing means. This part is based on scientific research. I have studied many theories of quality and on this study the most important ones are Garvin's (1989) and Lillrank's (1998) theories which I apply to the context of clothes. This study covers the quality of clothes from point of view of both consumers and companies. In the later part of the study I survey the quality communication of five well-known clothing companies. I collected the data from the companies' websites that are available to anyone. I used Atlas.ti-program to for analyzing the collected data. Five categories of quality formed the framework of content analysis. Quality is a multidimensional concept that is difficult to define as it is tightly related to the context. Subjectivity is also very characteristic to quality. The quality of clothing, as well as any product's quality, can be seen from five different angles. They are value-based, consumer-based, manufacturing-based, system-based and transcendent quality. Companies highlight all these categories on their web-sites. The data of the study presented also a new category of quality that I call quality experience. All companies concentrate mostly on telling about system-based quality of their products. Although many studies suggest that the manufacturing-based quality is the most important viewpoint to companies, my study doesn't support that outlook. For consumers, it is difficult to evaluate the quality of clothes. Therefor they evaluate mostly the aesthetic features of clothing. Companies provide quite much information of their products' quality. The information might be helpful for consumers but it should be evaluated critically