Apparel mass customization: Viability for Saudi Arabian female consumers

During the past three decades, the apparel industry has witnessed great changes in market, consumer demand, and technology. As a result, new marketing and manufacturing strategies have been implemented to meet these changes. Although some studies have investigated mass customization of apparel, none have focused on consumers outside the U.S. In today's globally-linked environment, the challenge to marketers is to understand the behavior of customers in globally dispersed countries.; Being in the final stages of becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, there is a great need for conducting more consumer research to understand the behavior of Saudi Arabian's approximately 22.7 million consumers as a potentially valuable apparel market.; The overall objective of this research was to explore Saudi Arabian female consumers' satisfaction with available ready-to-wear and custom-made clothing and to explore their satisfaction with available clothing selections, as well as their interest in, and the potential for, mass customized apparel. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 630 female college students in school cafeterias in three universities. The 473 usable surveys yielded final response rate of 74.8%.; Hypotheses were tested to determine the relationship between clothing satisfaction and clothing motivation and innovativeness, clothing satisfaction across three income levels, the difference in satisfaction between ready-to-wear and custom-made as well as the relationship between clothing satisfaction and willingness to use co-design customization. Results indicated that higher levels of clothing satisfaction are associated with higher levels of clothing motivation and innovativeness. Significant differences were found for satisfaction with custom-made and ready-to-wear clothing sub-categories. A significant difference also was found between clothing satisfaction and income level, i.e. satisfaction levels increase as income decreases. A significant relationship was found showing that respondents with high and medium levels of clothing satisfaction had higher levels of willingness to use co-designed clothing customization. Results also indicate that clothing satisfaction differs for both ready-to-wear and custom-made for the three clothing sub-categories. In conclusion it can be stated that the concept of co-design customization is of interest to Saudi Arabian female college students and a relationship exists between clothing satisfaction and interest in using co-design.