A Matter of Shoes : The Analysis of Desired Attributes of Shoes and Its Retail Shops from Bangkok Consumers ’ Perspectives

Through several statistical tests, this two staged research aims to study desired attributes of shoes and its retail shop. Four hundred fifty one samples were collected. In the first stage, the research analysed the level of importance of 50 factors drawn upon 6 retailing mix framework. The factors that were ranked “most important” and “highly important” were then selected for second stage analysis by using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). Based on EFA analysis, six new critical latent factors were grouped and named as, “Well Trained and Experienced Salesforce”, “Product Quality and Functions”, “Attractive Store and Product Presentation”, “Price and Perceived Value”, “Health and Comfort”, and “Fashion and Trends”. The research further explored if there was a significant difference of such factors on “Gender”, “Income Level” and “Age” of consumers. “Gender” and “Age” were confirmed to be the other drivers that could alter consumers’ perspectives toward the desired attributes of shoes and its retail shops. The shoe manufacturers and retailers are urged to take all these desired attributes into their consideration when they plan to develop and launch new shoe collections to market.


Introduction
In a modern day, shoes are not considered just items of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot while doing various activities.Shoes are viewed as items of decoration, fashionable products that are used to enhance self-image.The design of shoes, material selection, pricing, sale person, and attractive store have become important factors that underpin the buying decision of customers.
Despite its long development and contribution to Thai economy, research on footwear industry has not been widely undertaken.From a global perspective, shoes production worldwide has reached 20 billion pairs in 2010.The manufacturing sites are heavily concentrated in Asia, especially China and India.Those two countries alone accounted for 72.6% of the world shoes' production.From a national perspective, footwear industry and leather products accounted for 2.1 per cent of Thailand's GDP.In fact, this industry has grown up steadily over the past 20 years.Thailand was ranked seventh in terms of shoes production volume, after China, India, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Pakistan.In 2010, it was estimated that Thailand produced approximately 245 million pairs and exported 134 million pairs with its export values of USD 804 million.Also it is reported that domestic consumption of shoes in Thailand was among the top 20 with 163 million pairs (APICCAPS, 2011).However, more intense competition from oversea footwear producers, such as China, Vietnam, and Indonesia has lately been putting pressure on footwear exports from Thailand due to the advantage of lower wage production.Interestingly, APICCAPS (2011) reported that Thailand's domestic shoes consumption was among the world top twenty.Approximately 163 million pairs were sold in 2010 domestically.Corresponding with this fact, many of Thai footwear manufacturers have begun to increase their sales by developing their own brands for foreign and domestic markets.
Despites a wide array of consumer's behaviour research, there is very limited research that was conducted specifically on shoes worldwide.In a highly competitive market, it is important that manufacturers and retailers must reduce the psychological distance between consumers and themselves, and increase their ability to respond constantly changing consumer demands.Manufacturers must know the end consumers' specific product needs so well to reduce the lost opportunity to sell or to raise the level of consumer satisfaction, develop and maintain good relationships with their customers by listening and responding their demands with lowering costs and increasing quality of their goods and services (Endo & Kincade, 2005).
On the fashion aspect, strong brand identity can also assist to build trust between the brands and consumers, thus being a source of differentiation in highly competitive market (Ghodeswar, 2008).Goldsmith (2000) studied characteristics of heavy users of fashion clothing found that consumers who spent the most on new fashionable clothing were siginificantly different from light and non-users, regardless of gender and age.They are also more likely to seek out fashion information from various media and to shop more clothing and less sensitive to price.However, once it comes to products for young children, Ross & Harradine (2004) in their research on "I'm Not Wearing That!: Branding and Young Children" suggested that brand recognition commences at an early age and the perceptions toward brands were found to be difference between parents and their children.It was suggested that the earlier the marketer establishes brand awareness and recognition in the child, the stronger the brand association and imagery are likely to be when they become independent as consumers.
Recently, the study by Saha, et al. (2010) on "Factors Affecting Consumer Buying Behavior of Shoes in Kolkata" applied the 4Ps of marketing mix as a framework to classify and evaluate the importance level of various sub-variables such as brand, design, cash discount, store location, advertising on consumers in Kolkata, India.The affects from gender and income level on buying behavior of shoes were also tested.It was found that the factors to be considered by shoe manufacturers and marketers are quality, durability, right pricing, after sale service, and convenient location of the retail shops.Consumers prefer the buy the shoes from exclusive shoe outlets rather than through supermarkets or department stores.Male and female are found to have similar opinion regarding the importance of these factors.They are only found to differ in case of product warranty, store is conveniently located, TV advertising and lucky draws.The decision regarding the design, pricing, cash discount, and the availability of variety of models in the shops should also consider consumer's income as one of the critical decisive factor, since significant relationship was found to exist between the income and those factors.

Research Framework and Methodology
This research further expanded the research of Saha et al (2010) by expanding the boundary of analysis beyond just simply marketing mix (4Ps) to retailing mix (6Ps) by adding factors on presentation and personnel.The research also tests if there is a significant difference of such factors on gender, income level, and age.
The research adopted two staged analysis.First, 50 factors derived from literature review and key informants' interviews drawn upon six retailing mix was analysed and their level of importance was evaluated.The factors that were ranked "most" and "high" important were then selected for further analysis in the second stage by using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).T-test and ANOVA analysis were employed to test if there is significant level of such factors on gender, income level, and age.
The convenience sampling method was deployed due to its simplicity, fast, and inexpensive.We applied the sampling calculation method suggested by Yamane (1967) inferring to the total population of more than 100,000 and confidence level at 95% and collected 451 completed questionnaires.Reliability analysis using Cronbach's alpha was tested, and it confirmed reliability with Cronbach's alpha scores varied from 0.7 to 0.89 (Table 1).

Descriptive Analysis of Respondents
Among those participants, 57.4% are female and 42.6% are male with the age above 18 years old.66% of our respondents are between 26 to 45 years old.The monthly income ranges are varied among our respondents.The majority fall in the range of 10,001 to 40,000 Baht.There are about 60% of the respondents within this income band.The majority of our respondents are currently working in private companies, which contributed around 60% of all respondents.There were only 15% who are running their own business 16% are students and the remaining are those who work for government, state owned enterprises, and others (Table 2).Base on the responses from our respondents, the mean opinion scores were calculated for each sub-factor.The relative important level of the sub-variables has been defined by comparing the mean scores with the radical range we defined to measure their relative importance.Since a five-point scale has been applied in our study, the interval for breaking the range in measuring each variable is 0.8.Relative important level was then classified to five levels as "Least", "Low", "Medium", "High", and "Most" importance, according to our new interval breaking.We further investigated and explored the importance level of six Ps factors by applying the Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) technique to bring intercorrelated sub-variables together under more general, underlying variables, hence reducing the number of sub-variables required to explain our consumers' purchasing decisions.
Only 27 sub-variables among our six Ps that were ranked as "Most" and "High" important factors by mean opinion scores as shown in Table 3, were selected for further analysis.
"Maximum Likelihood" and "Oblimin with Kaiser Normalization" were applied as the extraction and rotation method respectively.According to Stevens (1992), the cut off value greater than 0.364 was suggested for the samples size of 300.In this research, the cut off value at 0.40 was applied.According to Kaiser (1974), the samples are considered to be barely adequate if the value of Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) is greater than 0.50.
Our KMO is confirmed that our samples are adequate with the KMO value of 0.88.The Goodness-of-fit test has revealed our test model to be acceptable, since both test statistics are found to be statistically significant at 5% significant level.

Influential Power of Gender
The factor scores of three underlying factors were observed to be significantly different between genders at 95% confidence level.Refer to difference of A-R score in We also conducted the t-Test on the mean opinion score (derived from original data) as shown in Table 6.It is found that female demand for a salesperson that provides better service and tends to demand for higher value for price paid compare to male.Female also pay more attention on "Lower price but same quality", or in general words female are more sensitive to price.Looking at Fashions & Trends items, female would seriously consider about the fashion and colour collections of shoes that match well with their outfit.As a result, we conclude that genders do have an influencing power on the factors affecting shoes buying decision.

Influential Power of Income
In general, the income range of consumers was believed to be one of the drivers that have an impact on individuals' buying decision, but it is not the case for shoes consumers in Bangkok at 95% confidence level.Investigating the mean opinion score of the sub-variables in the latent factors that are interact withage, also reveals that the senior consumers tends to pay more attention to "Value for Price Paid" and expect to receive good service from salesperson comparing with consumers at younger age.It is also suggest that consumers at younger age would probably have better response to the "Cash Discount" and tend to seek out for cheaper shoes while expecting to have same quality standard.

Conclusion and Managerial Implications
This research has provided a comprehensive contribution in theoretical and practical aspects to a better understanding on desired attributes of shoes and retail shops consumers in Bangkok, Thailand.The findings not only help manufacturers to understand the insights how consumers would make purchase decisions, but also serve as a useful information for those capable companies to tailor their retailing mix and move upscale in value chain, operating and building its own competitive brands through their own retail or outlet operations.Several managerial implications can be drawn as follows.
In term of product attributes, consumers in Bangkok would look out for shoes that fit well, hence provide high comfort while its design and fashion must also go well with their urban lifestyles and outfit.Consumers see the necessity of having high quality, light weight, and durable shoes with good air ventilation, hence prevent unpleasant odor from wearing shoes for long hours.This can be linked to the fact that Bangkok's climate is hot and humid.
Cash discount is considered to be one of the important factors that consumers would take into account when they purchase new shoes.Regular or special cash discount sould be offered as it was found to be a favorable attributes that would delight consumers, especially women and younger buyers.However, the widely used psychological pricing, which normally create false perception about the product may not be sensible for shoe consumers in Bangkok who give more weight on the value of shoes for price they have paid.
In the light of retailing perspective, shop decoration should be designed in such a way that provide relaxation and comfort to consumers.Variety of models & styles should be available on the display for consumers' choices.Special shoes testing area, such as steps or slope with different kind of surface finishing could be added for consumers to try on and experience with new shoes before they actually purchase.It is worthwhile to note that although online stores are conveniently to reach by just a finger click 24 hours a day, buying shoes online were discovered to be unpopular among Bangkok consumers.
Great service quality and product advises given by salesperson are expected by consumers.Our study has revealed that the "Well Trained and Experience Salesforces" are also critical desired attributes.On this point, the management shall pay high attention to craft their service along with quality product well through their well-trained salesforce, in order to generate sustainable sales growth.Salesperson who can only encourage customers to try on and select shoes on their preference may not be enough based on our findings.Retailers are urged to recruit, train, and regularly coach professional salesforce to be capable of analyzing customers' feet problems and understand customers' preferences so well before proactively recommend the shoes that perfectly match with customers' problems, outfit, budget, and preference.
Our factor analysis on "most" and "high" important sub-variables has concluded that consumers in Bangkok would consider the following underlying factors when they purchase new shoes; 1) Well Gender wise, women in Bangkok would pay more attention or give more weight to fashion, product, price, perceived value, as well as service quality offered by the salesperson.Moreover, women are more sensitive than men to the price point set for shoes in the market and seriously consider about the fashion and colour collections of shoes that match well with their outfit.With regard to the consumer income level, it was found that there was no significant difference on 6 desired attributes on consumer income level.With regard to age, the investigation on the influential power of age over shoes' desired attributes has revealed that consumers at younger age have better response to the cash discount and tend to seek out for cheaper shoes while expecting to have same quality standard.Consumers at older age demand for shoes comfort rather than fashion and normally value high quality service given by well trained and knowledgeable salesperson.

Limitation and Recommendation for Future Research
This research has two main limitations.Firstly, the study was conducted based on convenient sampling method.Therefore, this set of limited samples cannot be considered representative of the total population of Thai consumers.Secondly, the factors included in this study are based on 6P retailing mix.It may not reflect the whole aspects that people apply in shoes purchasing decision.It is also important to note that this research attempts to find key desired attributes of shoes and its retail shops in general.The result therefore has limitation to explain the differences of desired attributes (if any) between different kinds of shoes.
Future research can therefore broaden and deepen the analysis by enlarge number of sample size, apply random sampling method, doing a comparison study such as in different geographic location, or comparison desired attributes of shoes between different types of shoes.

Table 2 .
Descriptive analysis of respondents

Table 3 .
Mean opinion scores of desired attributed of shoes and its retail shops

Table 4 .
Summary of exploratory factor analysis

Latent Factor Factor Description Factor Loading a,b,c ESSL d % of Variance
Table 5, female in Bangkok would pay more attention or give more weight to factors of "Well Trained and Experienced Salesforce", "Price & Perceived Value", and "Fashions & Trends".Both genders are looking at "Product Quality & Functions", "Attractive Store & Product Presentation", and "Health & Comfort" similarly.However, it is observed that male in Bangkok would probably has more concern on "Product Quality & Functions" than female when they purchase a new shoe, since the t-Stat we observed is approaching the significant level.

Table 5 .
Analysis of t-test between gender and the 6 key attributes

Table 6 .
Comparison of mean score between male and female on "well trained & experienced salesforce", "price & perceived value", and "fashions & trends"

Table 7 .
Significant test on level of income Our test result in Table 8 has confirmed that people at different age pay attention to "Well Trained and Experience Salesforce" and "Price & Perceived Value" differently.

Table 8 .
Significant level of age interaction

Table 9 .
Comparison of mean score of "Well Trained and Experienced Salesforce" and "Price & Perceived Value" across different age