The Customer Experience

Introduction

I belong to generation Y and was born in Ho Chi Minh city – one of the most hustle and bustle city in Southern Vietnam. When asked, I identify as a purely Asian with Buddhism religion. I was sent to a church for studying when I was young so I was raised to be calm and obedient with the utmost respect for community and family values. I would describe myself as a middle class and first jobber, my mother is a tailor so I would say that since I was a teenager, I have been fashion consciousness and my mother was the person who influenced me the most on my consumption behaviour.

My interests including listening to music, watching movies, dramas and traveling. I enjoy watching American movie series like Friends, Glee and Korean reality shows. These hobbies are also the influence factors in my consumption as I’ve learned fashion from what the characters wearing.

I would regard clothes as one of the important means of communicating my identity. Fashion to me is the way of life, it’s not simply what you wear, but how you live, what you love and your originality, your fashion sense will speak to the world who you are. I would describe my style as urban minimalist which could be understood as the instant modern look, simple appeal but focused on form and fabric, combined with the sophisticated cut or printing. I literally have the big wardrobe, however, the vast majority of my clothes are mainly in black, white and blue but each item has a signature highlight.

Upon reflection, I always love to try new brands and explore new retailers. My preferred retailers are usually the small clothing brands with their own manufacturer. They usually release the new collection every month with affordable price but have their own unique style. Some examples of these in my country would be Libe’ workshop, Dottie or Tu by Catu.

The most important feature that I consider when buying clothes is the quality of the fabric. These are the main reasons why I always buy my clothes in store to touch and feel the textile and fabric instead of shopping online.

I have chosen three items to represent my taste: One of my white shirts with a little cute bow (see figure 1) as an everyday item, my favourite trench coat highlighted with silver zippers (see figure 2) and the sleeveless formal dress (see figure 3).

             Figure 1                                        Figure 2                                        Figure 3

Methodology

Subjective Personal Introspection (henceforth SPI) is a suitable method to conduct the understanding of human behaviour toward buying clothing journey, especially in the ethical and sustainable concern. This term SPI can be broadly defined as the qualitative method that involves the researcher as the main subject (Rod, 2011) and requires them reflecting and analysing their own consumption experiences related to the phenomena of interests (Holbrook, 2005). SPI allows researchers to explore the individual subjectivity (Gould, 1991) and transform it into the form of a personal narrative or autobiographical essay (Brown and Reid, 1997). Holbrook (1995) has referred this method as the “ultimate participant observation” of one’s own life whereas the researchers could examine their own behaviour and analysis their mental and emotion that affect their consumption at one specific time within specific situation. SPI creates an “autoethnography” which the practitioners can have unlimited access into actual snapshots of time, highlighting the moment that the researchers find it relevant to their clothing selection. Therefore, authors can get in depth as well as relevant insights to the research topic and “interrogate the way in which our own perspectives and frames of reference help shape our questions and interpretations” (Ladkin, 2005). One of the major benefits of SPI is that researchers could be more critical of the findings based on the insider perspective since these are their own experiences (Shankar, 2000).

SPI also considered as a controversial technique as this method mainly involves subjective experiences rather than provides scientific data set and reliable evidence and criteria to critically analysis the questions. To be specific, Wallendorf and Brucks (1993) identified that social bias might happen in order to form the self-generalize understandings or it is seen as “rather self-indulgent” (Baron, 2008). Researchers tend to shape their reports and show the persistence in the behaviour based on their beliefs about the social desirability. The specificity of data collected and documented data is necessary to build the in-depth interpretation of actions and attitude as well as to build theories from the data (Wallendorf and Brucks, 1993).

Wardrobe audit which is a tool belonging to SPI is also an efficient method as it has been used historically in various researches into ethical and clothing consumption (Goworek et al, 2012; Smith, 2013; Laitala, 2014). The wardrobe approaches have been used to address the Attitude – behaviour gap in different social context and psychology of their consumption journey.  

Consumption Behavior

The VALS survey has shown that my primary type is Experiencers while the secondary dominant type is Innovators. It is claimed that experiencers type has high resources and a Self-Expression motivation.

Figure 5: THE VALS result

I partly agree with the description of this group. Since my parents were busy with their own businesses and struggled to make the living, I was left alone at home and didn’t have many chances to take part in outdoor activities like friends in same age. I’ve grown up being curious about the world outside and enjoy physical activities as well as seeking for sensation as I was lacked of these enjoyments. When I was young, I was self-indulgent by playing with my brother and gradually became the movie-geek whom soon exposed to modern cultures by watching many international movies and dramas. I would be fairly saying that this is the main reason why I’ve always aware of the latest fashion trend and this was also the time that I have been growing fond of the contemporary art and theatres. The VALS interpretation also contrasts with my current personality. As the introvert and sensitive person, I’m not very sociable and comfortable with socializing with a big group of people. As the result, I’m quite nervous when standing in the crowd and hesitate when mixing too many high contrasted and outstanding colours in clothing. Rather than adopting up-to-date trend or using bold colours, I would go against the current mainstream and prefer to go back to basics, add my own personal taste include some small highlights which help to express my young and dynamic image. I’m interested in the simple appeal of clothing in black and white, in exquisite cut, high quality fabric and unique form, distinctive printing to make the long-lasting impression and could use for a long period of time. The vast majority of my clothes are in subtle colours and two third is in black and white. My favourite patterns are monochrome and stripes. This could create an urban modern look, never go out of trend and refer to me as the simple, youthful yet sophisticated and energetic person. This desirable image also affected on my footwear brand as I usually purchase shoes from Nike, Adidas. Belk (1988) has claimed that “We are what we have is perhaps the most basic and powerful fact of consumer behaviour”.