Propensity To Customer Switching: A Review On Apparel Stores

In the contemporary marketplace, customer switching has become a popularly addressed phenomenon. This study endeavoured to provide an approach to understand the customer switching behaviour and identify the major factors which influence customer switching in apparel stores. Clothing has become a major requirement for each and every customer in this modern society. Customers use their preferred brand, material and style etc. and become loyal to particular apparel store/s where they can enjoy the expected benefits in choosing preferred clothing items. However, customers may switch their apparel stores due to various reasons. Even though many clothing brands at different quality and price levels are available, many customers still switch among different apparel stores. In the field of apparel industry, researchers have put more weight on the fashion clothing, nature of purchasing decisions, and clothing brand loyalty etc. Howeevr, the research studies which focus on customer switching is scarce.Therefore, this study attempts to study the factors which cause customer switching in appreal stores. The survey method was adopted as the main research method to conduct the study. The sample consisted of 300 customers who were met at their visits to textile shops in the city of Matara in Sri Lanka. An exploratory factor analysis was employed to identify the major factors of customer switching. According to the results of the exploratory factor analysis, five major factors such as inferior quality, unavailability, service failure, stressful atmosphere and high price were identified as the major factors which influence the switching decision in retail apparel store.