‘n Sosiaal-sielkundige en kognitiewe benadering tot die ontwikkeling van ‘n kledingverbruikersbesluitnemingsmodel

Many academics and researchers underline the fact that textile training and research in merchandising do not emphasise the theory enough. This may partly be because retailing and marketing, and consumer education as applied fields, have not stressed basic theory in recent years. The role theory can play in solving practical problems has also been misunderstood. Merchandising and consumer education researchers have to collect and organise their own theory base. This theory base should incorporate root disciplines in the social sciences plus major contributions from marketing and business management, other fields of home economics, and in this case various textile and clothing areas. The choice of a new product requires decisions by the consumer. According to clothing theorists and researchers in clothing consumer education, these decisions are usually made in the clothing store at the point of purchase. The decision-making process consists of five stages, namely the awareness stage, the interest stage, the evaluation stage, the trail stage and the adoption stage. Clothing research indicates that clothing consumers seek information, compare alternative choices and make decisions at the point of purchase. It is important to know what information the clothing consumer seeks and uses in coming to a decision. It is also important to know what types of information are utilised by different consumer target groups. Researchers and academics should be aware of different patterns of seeking information, based on lifestyles, psychological characteristics and cognitive ability in the target groups. This information should be integrated and combined with the basic theory from related fields to develop a social-psychological and cognitive clothing consumer decision-making model to be used by academics and researchers in clothing consumer education programmes. In the field of clothing, the symbolic interactionism and a cognitive perspective have been successfully combined with theory in the fields of consumer behaviour to address a wide variety aspects, influences and problems in the field of clothing consumer education and in clothing consumer research. All the data should be integrated into a social-psychological and cognitive framework for clothing consumer decision making.