Combining Qualitative and Quantitative approach to Explore Office Ladies' Mental Model on Pantyhose

• Main Authors: Yu-ling Pan, 潘玉玲
• Other Authors: Jy-kuang Fang Ph.D.
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2006
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/17605181832357724402

碩士 === 世新大學 === 公共關係暨廣告學研究所(含碩專班) === 94 === Female pantyhose market is facing a great challenge at present. Due to the leisure style in fashion, the open-toe sandals and jeans were hot as ever. Girls started to get rid of pantyhose. In addition, the foreign products have been imported in quantities with advantages of lower prices or brand extension to compete and occupy the market. This had caused the hostile competition to lower the prices to increase the competitiveness between brands in the national market. The external and internal difficulties had caused the businesses harder to survive, and it affected the development of the whole socks market. This research combined the qualified and quantified research methods to study the office ladies mental model to pantyhose products. The purpose was to demonstrate the consumer’s model of behavior by digging out the thoughts and feelings deep in the consumers’ mind hence to be the base of the reference for industrialist’ product development and marketing. For the qualified research, this research had Means-End Chain as theory basis, using a new ZMET, Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique to analyze the office ladies thoughts and feelings for pantyhose products. It observed their desire, need for pantyhose products, and drew a common consensus map that represented their minds. In addition, abundant data of related image and summary of images from ZMET interviews provided pantyhose industrialists an applied marketing data combining literal and non-literal representations. For the quantified research, the research would conduct questionnaires in which the female pantyhose common consensus map represented by the ZMET would be turned into three quantity tables, the attribute, result, and value. It was analyzed and demonstrated with the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) that the female pantyhose’s product attributes, consumer result, and the personal value all showed a significant positive relation. This represented that the female pantyhose’s common consensus map for the mental model was established. This research recommended the industrialists some marketing advice according to the analysis and results above. It was in the hope that the future pantyhose industrialists could sufficiently master the latent thoughts of the target consumers when researching and developing a new product or establishing marketing strategies. It was also expected that the research would help to provide a product that would be closer to the consumers’ needs, as well as inject energy to the pantyhose market in the low tide.