Fabric hand as perceived by US and Korean males and females

Abstract

<p>The purposes of this research were to develop comparable sets of unipolar adjectives for consumer evaluation of fabric hand for English and Korean speakers and to examine how males and females in the United States and Korea use these descriptors. This research also examined preferences of judges for hand of shirt fabrics for the judge's own sex and for the other sex. The psychological approach was used for this research because human judgments of fabric hand provide multi-dimensional understanding of fabric properties. Stimuli were selected to represent a variety of shirting fabrics for U.S. and Korean males and females. Judges could see and touch fabrics simultaneously. All instruments for these procedures were in English for native English speakers and in Korean for native Korean speakers. The procedure for this research included four phases: focus group interviews, word list development, trial, and final data collection. Final data were collected using an 11-point certainty scale, with responses transformed to normalized ranks. Subjects were 70 each of Korean males and females and 70 U.S. males and 68 U.S. females. Based on analyses of variance as well as other information such as comments made during focus group interviews, three hypotheses were examined. The responses to fabric hand differed by country. Generally the main effect for country suggested meaning differences between English and Korean words. Some words such as harsh and smooth appear to have different meanings between English and Korean. Cultural differences were implied in the main effect for country as well as in the interaction of country by fabric and sex by country by fabric. The responses to cool and sheer suggested cultural and environmental differences between two countries. The responses to fabric hand differed by sex. The mean responses for females were significantly larger (absolute value) than the responses for males. However, this sex difference differed by culture. In addition, sex and cultural differences for fabric preferences for the judges themselves and for the other sex were supported. The research results provided implications for international manufacturers and retailers and researchers using affective stimuli.</p>