Consumer Behavior in Consumption of Clothing Products

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Consumer Behavior in Consumption of Clothing Products

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Consumer Behavior in Consumption of Clothing Products

Abstract

The clothing industry is reliant on knowledge about the behavior of consumers. This study revealed that consumer behavior was a complex phenomenon that is dictated by diverse and ever-changing factors. Consumerism is responsible for the dynamics of the American consumer’s behavior. Also, consumers use different models to make purchasing decisions. Moreover, consumer identity, lifestyle, influencer groups, and paid influencers significantly influenced the buying decisions of clothing consumers because they were ingrained into the clothing culture. Moreover, social media has enhanced the influence and reach of influencers, and increasingly influenced the buying behavior of clothing consumers. MyBatua.com is an Indian online clothing outlet that was yet to establish its physical presence in the American market. For this company, venturing into the American clothing market should focus on employing the glocal approach to position its brand and leverage technology to present new and exciting shipping experiences. To this end, it was recommended that the company conducts comprehensive market research to create consumer personas, open physical stores to complement its online presence and introduce virtual shopping technologies while infusing the Muslim culture into American clothing style.         

Introduction

The clothing industry has become increasingly competitive as new business models emerge. Clothing consumers are continuously changing their preferences with the basic traditional need for clothing being influenced by the more dynamic fashion preferences. Besides, the proliferation of online and digital technologies has revolutionized conventional brick-and-mortar stores with the advent of online outlets. In this regard, the traditional fashion industry is experiencing stiff competition from the fast-fashion model, shortening the lifecycle of clothing products, and providing trendy attire to budget customers. In turn, marketers are continuously finding ways of understanding and meeting the ever-changing preferences of clothing customers, thus increasing sales for their business clients.

Customer-centric marketing approaches require a detailed understanding of customers. These approaches seek to concentrate on diverse customer segments to improve customer targeting. The granular segmentation of customers enables clothing manufacturers and retailers to attend to the varied but specific needs and preferences. In this regard, a comprehensive understanding of consumer behavior is a critical source of competitive advantage for firms operating in the clothing and fashion industry. Similarly, different customers’ decision-making processes inform the design and execution of marketing strategies that target the specific customer segments of interest.

This portfolio report endeavors to analyze the behavior of consumers of clothing products. It begins by explaining the concepts of decision-making units and buyer personas related to the conduct of clothing consumers. It also discusses the decision-making models and how they are applied in the concept of consumer behavior in clothing customers. It also delves into the effect of several factors such as lifestyle, consumer identity, reference groups, and paid influencers on consumer behavior in the consumption of clothing products in offline and online contexts. Besides, it analyses the influence of culture on the behavior of clothing consumers. Finally, it makes practical recommendations for MyBatua.com, a Muslim-inspired online clothing shop wishing to enter the United States market.     

Concepts of Decision-Making Unit and Buyer Persona

Consumer behavior has interested researchers and marketers for a long time to understand how consumers make buying decisions. In this regard, customer perceptions have evolved through the development of consumer behavior theory and models. The utility theory that describes the consumer as a ‘rational economic man’ has been abandoned for a holistic perspective of the several and diverse factors that influence consumer behavior and decision-making.  In turn, five perspectives are applied to underpin the decision-making aspect of consumer behavior, namely the economic man, psychodynamic, behaviorist, cognitive, and humanistic viewpoints. The psychodynamic and behavioral theories explain clothing consumption and associated customer behavior. Specifically, clothing preferences are characterized by conspicuous and symbolic consumption, which underpin the consumers’ intention to display their uniqueness and social standing (Ma, Shi, Chen, & Luo, 2012).  

The decision-making unit (DMU) is a team or group of individuals that contribute to the buyer decision process, which comprises several stages undertaken by purchasers before making the final decision to purchase a product or service. The concept is often associated with sales and marketing activities in business-to-business (B2B) transactions, although it is applicable for individual buyers as well (Chlebišová, Kyzeková, & Zajarošová, 2011). The DMU should have the roles of initiator, gatekeeper, buyer, decision-maker, influencer, and user represented therein. However, depending on the complexity of the buying decisions, these roles can be performed by one or more individuals (Chlebišová, Kyzeková, & Zajarošová, 2011). In clothing purchases, the buyer plays all the six roles in a DMU. Expensive and high-fashion clothing demands complex decision-making from buyers compared to basic ones.  

The buyer decision process comprises several stages, including the recognition of need, searching for information, evaluating the alternatives, making the purchase decision, and exhibiting post-purchase behavior (Armstrong, Adam, Denize, & Kotler, 2014). Consequently, the four types of customer buying behavior are complex buying behavior, dissonance-reduction buying behavior, habitual buying behavior, and variety-seeking buying behavior. Among clothing consumers, these behaviors reflect the level of personal, social and economic risk presented by the involvement in the purchasing decision. Expensive clothes often involve the purchaser more that routine attire because of the higher risk they present. For instance, expensive garments should be fashionable and unique enough to justify the price, thus requiring more extensive decision-making. 

A buyer persona represents an ideal customer based on data from real customers and market research. It is a detailed, semi-fictional description of a person that represents the target audience. According to Kotler and Keller (2016), personas are detailed profiles of target customers based on their behavioral, attitudinal, geographic, psychographic, and demographic characteristics. Creating buyer personas ensures that processes of the acquisition and service to the customer are tailored towards the needs of the targeted buyers. Several models have been used to categorize buyers according to their personas. For instance, buyers are classified as spendthrifts, average spenders, and tightwads based on their money-spending behavior. Also, according to RAIN group, they can be grouped as driver, consensus, friend, guardian, spreadsheet, and maverick (Schultz, 2020). In addition, they can be classified as expressives, drivers, amiables, and analyticals based on their decision-making styles, which were advanced from the personality studies of David Merrill and Roger Reid (Newberry & Collins, 2017). In the clothing industry, buyer personas are described by the traditional parameters used for shoppers in physical stores, namely, age, education level, interests and hobbies, lifestyle, and income level. However, for online shoppers, lifestyle is more emphasized and dictated by additional attributes, such as social media usage, celebrity influencers. Nonetheless, regardless of whether clothing consumers prefer physical or online shopping, buyer personas that describe the buying behavior or these customers must be informed by current evidence rather than hunches and past experiences. This is because the personas are more fluid in contemporary society in tandem with the rapidly changing customer preferences and wants.     

Although decision-making roles remain the same for clothing consumers, the online and offline contexts have revealed subtle differences in the decision-making process. The consumer behavior for clothing buyers that prefer offline shopping is still dictated by the appeal of the physical interaction with the clothing products while evaluating the available alternatives, the interaction with the store assistants, the opportunity to bargain, and the enjoyment of experience provided by the ambiance of the store (Xu & Chen, 2017). In turn, although the online store does not present the same aspects of appealing to customer behavior similar to those of the physical store, it has introduced equally valuable elements that influence customer behavior, such as consulting product rating sites, opinions of others over social media, and chatting with online store assistants. Nonetheless, the decision making process in offline and online shopping of clothes require an understanding of the decision-making processes applicable in these circumstances.        

Decision-Making Models

People and organizations make several decisions daily. The commonly-used decision-making models include the rational decision-making model, the bounded rationality decision-making model, the Vroom-Yetton decision-making model, the intuitive decision-making model, and the recognition-primed decision-making model (Herrmann, 2017). In the rational decision-making model, the emphasis is on maximizing outcomes using information that can be collected and quantified. For instance, the utility of the garment may require the presencing of information related to durability based on the location and frequency of use, and suitability for the occasion. While the offline clothing stores provide tangible information, online shoppers rely on intangible information to make their purchasing decisions. In contrast, in the bounded rationality decision-making model, outcome maximization of not a priority, and therefore, little effort and time are invested in the process using minimum criteria to yield a good enough decision.

The Vroom-Yetton decision-making model advocates a situational approach to the decision making process by prescribing different procedures to suit different circumstances. In this regard, after considering the decision quality needed, the level of team commitment, and the time constraints presented by the circumstances, decision-makers can choose between autocratic, consultative, and collaborative approaches. In the garment buying situation, this theory may explain how youngsters make their purchases. For instance, they would involve parents when selecting formal clothes and consult friends when locating the most fashionable item. The intuitive decision-making model contradicts the rational decision-making approach by avoiding the stepwise approach and employing the sixth sense, gut instinct, or intuition. This model relies on recognizing patterns through rapid brain activity. This approach is common when purchasing relatively inexpensive but attractive clothing items. In turn, the recognition-primed decision-making model has several commonalities with the intuitive model, including pattern recognition and reliance on expertise and experience. Contrastingly, this model requires that a mental action script is followed and tweaked when the script does not yield satisfactory decisions (Herrmann, 2017). This is a common approach for purchasing regular garments from a trusted brand. However, the decision-making process using these models is often influenced by biases, which influence the quality of decisions made. These biases include confirmation bias, availability heuristics, survivorship bias, anchoring bias, and halo effect (Herrmann, 2017).

For consumers, decision-making models that influence their buying behavior include Nicosia Model, Engel-Kollat-Blackwell (EKB) Model, Howard-Sheth Model, Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) Model, and Kotler’s consumer purchase decision-making model (Xu & Chen, 2017). Nicosia model divides the decision-making process into four aspects, which are information-based consumer attitudes, product evaluation, the purchasing act, and feedback. Specifically, the EKB Model advances a four-stage decision-making process comprising information input, information processing, decision processing, and decision process variables. It theorizes that the consumer decision-making process involves mental and social processes. The mental activities conducted during the process include “exposure, attention, comprehension, acceptance and retention” as the brain processes the information obtained from vast sources (Xu & Chen, 2017, p. 1). Online shopping leverages the information input step by providing much information from diverse sources seamlessly and cost-effectively. Howard-Sheth Model proposes four factors that influence purchasing behavior, namely, input, output, internal, and external, while the Stimulus-Organism-Response Model focuses on stimulus as the cause of consumer behavioral tendencies that are based on the external environment surrounding the consumer alongside the psychological and physiological aspects. Kotler’s consumer purchase decision-making model pushes the five-stage decision making process that is commonly used to explain consumers’ purchasing behavior (Xu & Chen, 2017). After identifying the need for a product or service, the consumer gathers as much information as possible and evaluates the available alternatives. At this point, the consumer creates an opportunity to buy, in which case a decision about how much money will be spent is made. Alternatively, the buying is abandoned, and the consumer repeats the process until the desired outcome is achieved. Kotler also noted that the experiences of the previous decision influence future ones (Xu & Chen, 2017).   

These consumer decision-making models are applicable to both physical and online clothing buyers, but may differ based the complexity of the decision. Most importantly, they help marketers interpret how consumers employ the five stages of decision-making made during the buying process. In the end, consumers exhibit shopping behaviors that focus on the product of interest, the needs that are product and non-product related, and the goals that are not related to the product (Xu & Chen, 2017). Moreover, the motivations, attitudes, and perceptions of the consumer influence the complexity, approach and speed of decision-making. For instance, a buyer that wants to buy a shoe to replace a damaged one while on the street may adopt the bounded rationality decision-making model to purchase a shoe that would sufficiently serve its purpose until the consumer gets home. Therefore, the marketers of clothing items should understand and develop strategies that stimulate clothing consumers to embark of the purchasing process and commence the buying decision-making process, while supplying sufficient cues that would enhance the likelihood of actual purchases in the shortest time to avoid consumer disappointment from out-of-stock challenges. This is critical in the clothing industry, considering that many clothing items are seasonal due to fashion dynamics. Moreover, consumers’ fashion choices and preferences are influenced by opinion leaders that consist of celebrities and fashion bloggers.                 

Influencers of Consumer Behavior

Customer exhibits buying behavior that is unique to themselves or the groups to which they belong. Therefore, their behavior is influenced significantly by customer identity, lifestyle, reference groups, and paid influencers. These influencers embody the social forces that are presented as psychological, personal, social and cultural factors (Kotler & Armstrong, 2017). Moreover, the role of influencers has increased due to globalization and technological advancements that have caused significant changes in social and societal trends, affecting the consumers’ preferences and behavior (Zak & Hasprova, 2020). In this regard, these influencers influence the buying decision-making process positively and negatively.     

Consumer identity

Consumer identity is a personal aspect that influences the behavior of consumers. It denotes the patterns of consumptions used people to describe themselves and exhibit their social identity. In this regard, the concept of consumer identity is grounded in the social identity theory that was advanced by Tajfel and Turner to explain intergroup behavior and the associated decision-making processes therein (Zeugner-Roth, Žabkar, & Diamantopoulos, 2015). According to the theory, intergroup behaviors can be predicted through the perceived differences in group status, also, the perceived stability and legitimacy of the differences in group status can predict the behavior of the members. Further, the ability of an individual to transit between groups dictates the behaviors exhibited. Consequently, the self-image of people has an element of the individual that is described as the personal identity and the group component that brings forth the social identity. Further, the social identity theory posits that people enhance their self-esteem by endeavoring to attain or sustain a positive self-identity (Zeugner-Roth, Žabkar, & Diamantopoulos, 2015). From this basis, Zeugner-Roth, Žabkar, and Diamantopoulos (2015) advanced three constructs, namely, the pro-in-group, pro-out-group, and anti-out-group that can be used to explain the influence of sociopsychological traits related to consumer behavior based on national identity, consumer cosmopolitanism, and consumer ethnocentrism respectively. These concepts can be used to explain the drivers of the willingness to buy local and foreign clothing products. The interplay between consumer cosmopolitanism, consumer ethnocentrism, and national identity presents several consumer behavior patterns that can help segment customers.

Consumer identity influences the need recognition and alternative evaluation stages of the consumer decision-making process. For instance, in the fast fashion industry, cost-effective fashion garments have emerged in recognition of the need for individuals to make fashion statements using clothing styles that are associated with renowned fashion houses. However, unlike the high society that are able to display their social identity by buying genuine fashion brands that are exorbitant, the fast fashion industry consumers have a much lower economy power to afford the original creations. Moreover, the willingness of consumers to identify with high fashion drives them to seek alternatives to the expensive runway garments during their decision-making. For this reason, this industry thrives on consumer cosmopolitanism in which clothing consumer can still demonstrate their identity through their open-mindedness and appreciation of diversity regarding foreign clothing brands (Zeugner-Roth, Žabkar, & Diamantopoulos, 2015).    

Lifestyle

Consumers choose their desired products and services based on how well they reflect their lifestyles. Lifestyle reveals consumer behavior characteristics that are more comprehensive than personal values and more contemporary than personality (Anitha, 2016). In this regard, lifestyle has a substantial positive sway on buying decisions in the modern, highly-competitive market environment. Although lifestyle is influenced by one’s opinions, interests, and behavioral orientations that represent the living characteristics, lifestyle segmentation is particularly important in understanding consumer behavior. For clothing consumers, the habit of wearing fashion garments can induce a fashion-oriented impulse buying behavior in which the consumer responds to clothing items that depict the latest fashion trends. This shortens the information searching and purchase decision-making steps, thus making the consumer to make a quicker buying decision. Lifestyle brands like Zara and H&M have mastered the art of brand extension. They do so by offering a range of home textile products that revolve around the lifestyles of consumers by moving beyond offering clothing products only. They also offer consumers the opportunity to express their lifestyles by accompanying consumers through the changing situations and life stages by leveraging on consumer brand loyalty. In the United States, lifestyle clothing brands like Southern Tide, Coastal Cotton, Sothern Proper, and Mobile Bay, have stood out and succeeded during difficult economic times when other brands were crumbling by leveraging their brand personality. For instance, Southern Tide was launched in 2006 and grew by 3,121% in the following three years during the height of the financial recession of 2008 (Parks, 2018). Its phenomenal success is attributed to the granular differentiation beyond the classic American style brand to the southern lifestyle brand, which identifies with the lifestyle of Americans living in the traditional southern states, like Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas (Parks, 2018). Brand personalities are categorized as ruggedness, sophistication, competence, sincerity, and excitement, as advanced by Aaker in 1997, and represent different lifestyle conceptualizations that should be of interest to clothing product marketers. In real life situations, brand personalities are a composite of varying proportions of the five dimensions. For instance, in the case of southern lifestyle brands, whose personality is described as casual, sophisticated and southern, elements of the brand personality categories can be identified. These include varying proportions of sophistication, ruggedness, and excitement (Parks, 2018).   

Reference groups

Individuals, groups of people, and institutions that influence the beliefs, opinions, attitudes, and behaviors of others are called reference groups. They not only inspire but also serve as role models, thus influencing others to emulate them. Reference groups are characterized by their norms, roles, status, and socialization.  In marketing practice, influence groups impact on the way consumers interpret marketing information and make buying decisions. This influence is exerted through the norms, which direct consumers toward certain product and service preferences to demonstrate adherence. For instance, the law profession persuades men to wear pin-striped suits of dark and neutral colors and women to avoid short and revealing clothes while high society members are accustomed to tuxedos during dinners, banquets and social events (Mixon, 2020). The influence of reference groups is also wielded through status, which impacts on the purchasing decisions, with members placed higher up in the group’s status hierarchy having power to make the final buying decisions. For instance, in a family, the parents hold the final say about which clothes their young children wear. However, this sway diminished as the family progresses through its lifecycle and the children mature to make their own buying decisions. In this regard, the role of the parents as decision-makers and purchasers reduces over time. As mentioned earlier, the roles in making buying decisions are initiator, gatekeeper, buyer, decision-maker, influencer, and user, which are also evident in influencer groups. Family members play these different roles when making a decision on which clothes to purchase, and the influence of each member in their particular role changes alongside the role shifts in the family as it progresses through its lifecycle.   

Reference groups influence the entire decision-making process of consumers though their informational, utilitarian and value-expressive approaches. Moreover, consumers refer to reference groups when faced with brand or product uncertainty and therefore unable to make purchasing decisions (Ikeda, Kato, Ohtake,&Tsutsui, 2016). However, specific influencers are paid by marketers to influence the buying decisions of consumers to benefit business performance.

Paid Influencers

The advent of the internet and digital technologies has created new avenues of understanding the behavior of consumers. These technological advancements have also enabled influencers groups to influence the buying behavior and decisions of consumers through electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) to augment their traditional word-of-mouth capabilities. Marketers engage influencers to promote brands and products for a price. With many influencers having presence and a large following on    social media, they can now use social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to dispel consumer uncertainty and encourage the purchasing of certain brands and products. In the clothing industry, paid influencers also use fashion blogging to share their experiences with consumers, while social media analytics enables them to conduct and share in-depth analysis of clothing manufacturers and retailers, which in turn, created a viral marketing effect in which marketing messages reach a vast population speedily and cost-effectively (Sudha & Sheena, 2017). Nowadays, influencers earn huge sums of money based on their celebrity status and social networks. For instance, Kylie Jenner, an American socialite, Selena Gomez, a renowned actor and singer, Christian Ronaldo, a footballer, are highly sought-after paid influencers on Instagram who are paid up to $1 million, $500,000, and $400,000 for a single sponsored post on Instagram (Hireinfluence, 2020). They are also the most prolific fashion influencers with Ronaldo, Jenner, and Gomez having many followers, high engagement rates and a huge authentic engagement number on Instagram, as summarized in table 1 (Influencer Marketing Hub, 2020). Any clothing product they endorse is guaranteed to enjoy huge sales.

Table 1. Influencer metrics of Ronaldo, Jenner, and Gomez on Instagram

Name	User name	Followers (million)	Engagement rate (%)	Authentic engagement (million)
Christiano Ronaldo	@cristiano	244	2.40	4.2
Kylie Jenner	@kyliejenner	181	3.10	4.1
Selena Gomez	@selenagomez	180	2.12	3.1

Paid influencers influence the whole decision-making process in purchasing clothes. For instance, an item worn by an influencer can cause youngsters to yearn for it and start finding out more information from the influencer. In turn, the purchasing decision is made faster when supported by a renowned influencer (Zak & Hasprova, 2020). Altogether, the power of influencers resides in their ability to influence the culture of consumers. 

Culture and Consumer Behavior

Culture regulates the behavior of the members of a society through the ingrained customs, values and beliefs that are passed down generations and shared by specific groups. In this regard, culture is considered the most basic cause behind the wants and behaviors of people, considering that the basic values and perceptions and underpin these characteristics, are often learned in childhood  from the individual’s family and other key institutions, such as schools and colleges   (Kotler & Armstrong, 2017). In marketing practice, the culture of an individual influences the social, personal, and psychosocial elements of his or her buying behavior. Kotler and Armstrong (2017) notes that the western culture, which dominates the united states and most European countries, is characterized by individualism, progress, achievement and success, freedom, material comfort, youthfulness, and more lately, health and fitness. In this case, cultural shifts inform clothing designers and manufacturers on the new clothing items and styles that might be wanted in the market.

For instance, the shift towards greater fitness and health concerns has created the demand for apparel that is suitable for physical activity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, the number of Americans that were meeting or exceeding exercising guidelines by the federal government increased from 18.2 % to 24.3 % between 2008 and 2017 (Mundell, 2019). In the same vein, Kunst (2020) revealed that the value of athletic apparel and swimwear market in the country had grown from $42.5 billion to $72.5 billion between 2012 and 2019, and was forecasted to surpass $95.7 billion by 2025, as illustrated in figure 1.

Figure 1. Growth of the value of athletic apparel and swimwear market

Although dominant cultures are often the most visible in a society, subcultures are subtle variations that are exhibited by the different segments of the society. Subcultures are based on the value systems shared by people in situations or with life experiences are common (Kotler & Armstrong, 2017). Subcultures may be categorized by race, geography, religion, nationality and other variables. In the United States, the plus-size women have emerged as a subculture because of sharing larger than average sizes. This is because the number of obese people in the country has increased and thus become noticed by clothing designers, manufacturers and marketers. Notably, the CDC (2020) reported that the prevalence of obesity among Americans had increased from 30.5 % to 42.4% between 2000 and 2018. This has influenced the emergence of the plus-size category in apparel to meet the demand from people with larger-than-average bodies. O’Connell (2020) reported that previously, Lane Bryant was the only clothing shop in the United States catering for plus-size women, but this had changed in recent times, with the entry of several major retailers, like Mango, ASOS, and H&M. similarly, with the emergence of online clothing outlets, approximately an eight of the clothing items on these platforms by department stores in the country were availed in plus sizes. Moreover, the plus-size clothing market for women was projected to grow from a value of $28.9 billion to 46.6 billion between 2019 and 2021 (O’Connell, 2020).

Similarly, popular culture is influential to the behavior of buyers. Popular culture is related to the beliefs, practices and artifacts that prevail in society at a given moment, which makes it more transient than the dominant culture in a society. In western countries, popular culture is characterized by consumerism and commercialism in which people adopt certain unique behaviors that are characteristic of an era or generation. In the United States, popular culture has been defined by the kind of music, clothing, and talking style that has been adopted by a particular generation in a given period. Popular culture is most visible among the younger generation in society, especially the adolescents, who look up to influencers and each other with admiration and are greatly influenced by their peers, celebrities and mass media. For instance, the hip-hop and street culture are closely related popular cultures that emerged in the United States in the 1990s and continue to influence the clothing preferences of the youngsters to date. In turn, streetwear and urban clothing are noticeable clothing styles adopted by the American youth. Clothing retailers, like ASOS, Commonwealth, Moose Limited, and Bogega have emerged in the United States to service this niche market. In addition, these outlets have responded to the technological savviness of the millennial generation by availing their clothing items online and creating exciting virtual shopping experiences that resonate with this market segment. Bright colors, individuality, and freedom are the hallmarks of these brands as they appeal to the culture of the youthful clothing consumers.  

Therefore, culture influences the consumption of clothing items by inspiring consumers to belong to a social group and express their belongingness. Clothing items depict different cultures through their style, colors, and craftsmanship.  However, with increasing globalization and use of internet technologies, clothing cultures are spreading fast across the world as people belonging to different cultures travel and reside in different locations from their place of origin. The cultural globalization is influencing clothing tastes and marketing approaches of clothing. For instance, the Muslim-inspired fashion industry has grown following the significance of the $254-billion Muslim market globally (Segran, 2018). This segment is poised to attract upcoming Muslim-inspired brands, like MyBatua.com, into the United States.       

Recommendations

The clothing market in the United States is very competitive and is saturated with many players. The American consumers of clothing products are very demanding and will not hesitate to switch brands to achieve their desires. For these reasons, any clothing company wishing to enter the American market should understand intimately the customer behaviors of the diverse segments therein. This would help it discover the underserved clothing market segments and identify the most suitable strategy for persuading and capturing these segments. In this regard, the following recommendations are provided MyBatua.com that would like to venture into the American clothing market. 

Firstly, MyBatua.com should consider using glocal brand approach in which the clothing offerings combine global and local fashion tastes. Specifically, the company should infuse its Muslim-inspired designs into American clothing tastes (MyBatua.com, 2019). To facilitate this, MyBatua.com should undertake a comprehensive market research to determine the segment of American population that is attracted to modest dressing, which is the hallmark of Muslim fashion. In this respect, the market research would reveal the attributes of the targeted market related to their clothing preferences, decision-making processes, openness to new and foreign fashion styles, and acceptance of foreign designers from non-American cultures. The lifestyle, personal identity, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, opinion leaders of the American market segment will help MyBatua.com develop the appropriate consumer personas that not only display the adventurous attitude of experimenting with foreign clothing tastes but are also sufficiently nationalistic to appreciate the infusion of foreign variables into the domestic clothing styles. The consumer personals would also help MyBatua.com to create forceful marketing strategies that would influence the buyers’ decision-making process and encourage them to purchase the clothing items from the online and offline stores. Moreover, it would influence the brand management approach used by MyBatua.com. In this case, MyBatua.com should use the global-local brand management approach that would introduce the Muslim clothing culture into the contemporary fashion market in the United States. Already, lifestyle brands, such as Zara and H&M have achieved great success in the clothing industry in the United States using the global-local brand management approach in which they have managed to introduce Mediterranean and Scandinavian lifestyles into the country. Similarly, the American southern lifestyle brands, like Southern Tide, Coastal Cotton, Sothern Proper, and Mobile Bay have proven their resilience in turbulent economic times by appealing to the ethnocentrism of a segment of the American clothing market. By combining the approaches of the international and local lifestyle brands, MyBatua.com can inject particular American aspects into Arabic clothing styles that target the Muslim segment of the population and their admirers.

Secondly, MyBatua.com should consider setting up physical stores alongside its existing online marketplace. The brick-and-mortar stores would enable consumers to engage the clothing items physically, which is critical when making a buying decision involving clothing items that are unfamiliar. Physical stores would appeal to brand reliability and credibility of the consumers, which are critical to the making of buying decisions. In addition, physical stores are critical companions of online outlets in the clothing industry because they continue to offer the shopping experience that supplements the online one. In this respect, shoppers that have perused the online shop to identify their desired clothing items can proceed to the physical store to continue with the buying decision-making process that would lead to an actual purchase. 

Thirdly, MyBatua.com should create a new online shopping experience for the American shopper. With the advancements in internet and digital technologies and the improvement in the computing power of mobile devices, the company should introduce innovative applications of artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality to created exciting shipping experiences the meet and exceed the expectations of the targeted market in the United States. The American market has a technologically savvy market segment that comprising majorly of millennials. The innovative technologies should enable the shopper to move through the store and evaluate the options available through a near-life experience. For instance, the shopper should be able to virtually try on the clothing items, visualize the different color and style variations, and wear several clothing items at the same time to visualize the complete look. Considering that MyBatua.com would be introducing a distinctive clothing line to the American market, it should engage successful influencers, such as Kylie Jenner, because of their trend-setting capabilities. It should also consider engaging popular Muslim celebrities in the country as paid influencers because of the significant sway they have on their followers on social media.             

Conclusion

In this report, consumer behavior was analyzed across its diverse dimensions because of the critical role it plays in predicting the buying process, understanding the consumer behaviors, and informing the marketing strategies that are required to target specific consumer segments. The analysis revealed that several decision-making models are applied by clothing consumers around the world based on their unique and universal characteristics, circumstances and influences. In this regard, while the decision-making process follows the five-steps generally, different consumers emphasize some aspects more than others based on their shopping preferences. The online clothing outlets have revolutionized the way clothing shopping is conducted, and markets have responded appropriates by customizing their customer profiling techniques. Nonetheless, the physical stores still offer an irreplaceable shopping experience that cannot be substituted by online shops. In this regard, markets are mastering the art of characterizing the consumer behaviors of online and offline shoppers and leveraging this knowledge to devise innovative marketing approaches. Notably, social media has introduced numerous tools that facilitate the granular characterization of consumer behavior while presenting new ways of influencing buying decisions. Moreover, global and local lifestyle brands have succeeded in their chosen market segments because of their ability to characterize their target customers precisely, which has help them position their brands and products successfully. With these considerations, MyBatua.com wishing to enter the American market should focus on the glocal approach and presenting an exciting shopping experience. This can be achieved by leveraging the customer behavior characterizations strategies that have been revealed in this analysis. Specifically, it is recommended that MyBatua.com conducts a comprehensive marketing research of the American market that would unearth the customer identity, lifestyle, and clothing opinion leaders to build consumer profiles of the targeted market segments. Also, it should establish brick-and-mortar stores in the country to allow consumers to physically interact with the clothing products, and therefore, complement the online buying decision-making process. Moreover, it should infuse the Muslim clothing culture into the American styles to glocalise its brand.          

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