Project proposal

An examination of long-ter m changes for the international f a s h i o n i n d u s t r y d r i ve n b y technical product innovation: T he exter nal factor s and consumer needs contribute to the trend of wearable technology.

image1. Wearable technology. Source: Techco, 2014.

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Table of Contents

04 Research Question 04 Abstract 05 Aims & objectives 08 Introduction 12 Rationale 14 Research Methodology 18 Research Design 22 Ethical Condiseration 22 Limitation 23 Critical Path 24 List of Bibliography 24 List of Illustration

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Research Question

A n ex a m i n at i o n o f l o n g - t e r m ch a n g e s fo r t h e inter national fashion industr y driven by technical product innovation: The external factors and consumer needs contribute to the trend of wearable technology.

Abstract The research dissertation aims to get the insight of technical product innovation influencing the fashion industry, and produce the current framework of fashion industry responding to external environment change and consumer needs. By defining what technical product is at the first stage, the following research will be conducting ‘research onion’ layers to explore research methodology from interpretivism philosophy and deductive approach to mix methods. The final purpose of the research is to draw conclusion and recommendation for the fashion industry in the longterm development on technical product.

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Aims

1. To understand the external environment change influences the fashion industry.

2. To understand how fashion industry adjust the trends of technical product innovation.

3. To understand how brands that have developed technical products increase brand values.

4. To understand technical product consumption with relation to the consumer’s preference.

Objectives 1. To define what technical product is.

2. To exam how technical product innovation drives the fashion industry.

3. To research the fashion industry in responding the external environment change.

4. To measure the usage of technical products by consumers and quantify the consumer preferences on technical product.

5. To evaluate brand’s strategies over launch technical products over case studies.

6. To investigate the implications for fashion industry.

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Research Question

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image2. Wearable technology. Source Techco, 2014.

Introduction

According to BrandZ’s research, the top 100 most valuable brands in 2014 has increased 12 percent and reached to $2.9 trillion in brand value (Figure1).

In 2014, apparel industr y led the growth with 29 percent overall increases (Figure2), all categories has experienced of the rise in brand value. And 10 of 14 categories met the double-digit growth. The growth led by apparel industry, the brands that have significant growths are: Adidas up with 47%, Nike with 55% and Uniqlo with 58%. To illustrate one of the key factors that lead the trends is technology, the convergence of clothing and technology into wearable (BrnadZ, 2014).

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Figure 1: The top 100 brand value doubles since 2006 (Source: BrandZ 2014.)

Figure 2: All categories increase the brand value in 2014. Growth led by Apparel with 29% increases.

(Source: see as BrandZ 2014.)

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Apparel consumer has strong desire to purchase clothing, but consumers are seeking value and investing in brands that provide fashionable with longevity as well as function.

Middle market brands informed by high-end fashion successes.

Consumers now has less concerned about sticking out an image with logos, more concentrated on how brands could make them feel confident and discriminating.

Wearable technology and clothing continue to converge, and apparel brands that have integrated with technology have growth in value. For example, Nike’s brand value rose 55% in 2014 with pioneering the intersection of apparel, technology and community over social media. Uniqlo is also a good example, by launched the Heattech which keeps heat in, and AIRism which lets the air out. On the commitment of delivering clothing that are affordable, functional and fashionable to the consumers.

Now Uniqlo has its presence all over the world and brand value increased 58% in 2014 (BrnadZ, 2014).

Figure 3 Top 10 Apparel. (Source: see as BrandZ 2014.)

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image3. Uniqlo’s heattech clothing. Source: ecouterre, 2011.

image4. Adidas Skateboarding. Source: Radcollector, 2013.

image5. Nike advert. Soruce: behance, 2013.

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Rationale Fashion industry is moving forward to a step that has never seen before. Wearable technology is emerging. Advanced materials and technologies are turning around the apparel industry. At the beginning, wearable technology was made for health care purpose.

The development of mini sensors that is able to attach to the body to be part of clothing that can easily monitor patient’s condition, such as embedding technical element in fabric of garment (Bonato, 2005).

However, the breakthrough has opened innumerable possibilities for fashion industry. Within the fashion industry, wearable technology relates with smart fabric, which allows consumers wear more functional clothes for particular used. To embed more functionality material in fabric requires highly investments in research and development. And according to a research by Forbes, it is a well investment in promising returns. There are some brands already eyeing on wearable technology and make high invest on it such as Ralph Lauren, Nike and Uniqlo (Axwen, 2014).

The purpose of this study is to analyze how technical product innovation influences fashion industr y and how consumption made by consumer. The study is aim to understand the external environment changes and inter nal consumer per spective of technical product affecting fashion industry in long-term and thus, to generate recommendation for fashion brands in the future strategies includes: communication, product development and marketing.

image6. Is the player nervous? Just ask his shirt.

Source: NYtimes, 2014.

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Research methodology Literature review At beginning of the study, it is necessary to conduct literature reviews to have basic understand of relevance studies. Greener (2008) suggests that any research studies either inductive or deductive for academic research requires critical analyzing literature reviews to clarify the idea of theoretical context and to help identify the purpose of the study outcome. Greener further explains that literature reviews has three types: 1) Primary literature sources: company literature, unpublished research, conference proceedings, blogs and personal websites. 2) Secondary literature sources: books, journal articles, news, and published reports from government and private institutes. 3) Tertiary literature sources: citation index, dictionary, encyclopedias, catalogues and debase (Greener, 2008). The research tree (Figure4) has been made to give a guideline of research structure and process.

Figure 4: Research tree 14

Methodology The research methodology combines primar y research and secondar y research methods to qualify the data. The research methodology can be explained through “The Research Onion�

(Figure5) (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2012), which describes the whole processes of the research methodology effectively.

Figure5: The research onion source: (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2008).

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The research philosophy is used Interpretivism, which advocates that it is important to understand the differences between humans in our role as a social actor. The significance of the interpretivism is emphasis on managing research among people rather than objects.

Therefore it is important to understand the perspective of the research subjects (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill 2012). And this study is a business research which is part of social research.

The approach will be undertaking the deductive approach as survey. Beiske (2007) states that deductive research approach looks into existing theory or phenomenon to test if that theory is correct in a given situation. Snieder and Larner (2009) further explain that the reason starts with a theory is to lead to a new hypothesis.

And the hypothesis is put to test with observation and lead to confirmation or rejection (see as Research methodology, 2010).

Figure 6 shows the deductive approach process.

Figure 6 the deductive approach process

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The ground theor y and case study will be used in the study.

Goulding (2002) explains that ground theory can be widely used in business and management issues. It is certainly helpful to predict and explain behaviors, as much of business and management issues are strongly related with consumer behavior, and this study will be discussing the consumer perspective by using the ground theory to validate the primary and secondary data. Suddaby (2006) further argues that ground theory is not just the best example of inductive approach. It is important that researcher should consider data collected under conceptual level in order to make a conclusion that contains theoretical framework. The case study also will be employed in the study to get more understanding of the existing brands’ strategies that have already developed technical products.

A mixed method approach will be applied in this study. Mixed method approach in terms of when both qualitative and quantitative methods are adopted in the research. This study will use Mix method - qualitative and quantitative research techniques to collect data and ‘qualitise’ both qualitative and quantitative data. Due to the time is constrained on the final dissertation; a cross-sectional study will be used in order to mange the time horizon, so that data will be collected from multiple sources.

The research hypothesis is developed from theories such as Bayus’ Speed to market and new product performance tradeoffs, Management Reacts According to External and Internal Moves, Marslow’s hierarchy of needs and BCG matrix. Also other potential theories may be applied and identified during the literature review and secondary research.

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18 Image7: Partnerships are key to taping wearable tech. Source: Bof, 2015.

Research Design

The research is based on deductive approach to generate hypothesis from literature review and secondary research. To examine the hypothesis in qualitative and quantitative research methods, and related studies will be used to prove the hypothesis. The following figure is to explain the research design process (Figure7).

Figure 7: Research design process 19

Research methods

Secondary research Secondary research will be employed on external environment changes, competitive economy, technical product innovation, consumer preferences and acceptance of consumer psychology etc.

Also the technical product innovation affects fashion industry and further implication such as strategies changes and the longevity of the technical product for the long-ter m development. Case studies will be conducted to see how the current brands that have developed technical product increased their market share and brand value. The research sources will be used on books, Internet, journal articles, magazine, business reports, debases and case studies of relevant brands.

Primary research This study will use several primary researches to collect data to ensure the credibility of the data.

Observation Obser vation will be used in stores to obser ve consumer’s choice on technical product to categorize and identify consumer demography, technical product material and functionality, brands’ communication strategies and core value online and offline.

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Questionnaire Through questionnaire to collect consumers’ opinions to get the basic understanding of the consumers’ preferences on brand and technical product and the consumer needs on technical product.

Also questionnaire has enormous benefit of colleting data largely over Internet, once a largely data has been collected that will be able to analyze the data quantitatively. However the drawback will be having the chance of low response and less interactive.

Interview By using interview will be able to make the researcher to look in-depth on consumers’ perspectives and their preferences and needs on technical product, also consumer acceptance and future expectation on technical product. Furthermore, interview allows participants and researcher to have conversation more interactively to get more insights from participants. Also interview will consider conducting with experts to understand the insights of technical product development and fashion industry’s attitude of current and future trend on wearable technology. However, the disadvantage of using interview is that participants might not willing to share their whole opinions to the researcher.

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Ethical consideration The ethical issues are important to academic research; on every research stage will take ethical consideration into account. At every research method will inform every participant that this study is for academic purpose and participant will be totally confidential, and hand out the completely designed guideline of ethical clearance form to participant to sign. After participants taking the survey, they will receive the information and have access on the major finding.

Limitation The study under the research processes might be influenced by some factors such as author’s personal experience, bias and limited knowledge of business. Also the quality of the result might be affected by time constrained and sampling of participants are random selected and transparency of business information. Thus the major finding might not be completely objective.

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Critical Path

June

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Literature review Secondary research Analysis and Hypothesis development Secondary research Primary research Data collecting and analysis Draft Correcting base on feedback Further research and analysis Finalising Hand in

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List of Bibliography

Axwen, 2014 Emerging designers creating beautiful wearable technology [online]. Available at: http://www.axwen.com/2014/12/14/ emerging-designers-creating-beautiful-wearable-technology/ B o n at o, P. , 2 0 0 5 . A d v a n c e s i n we a r a b l e t e ch n o l o g y a n d applications in physical medicine and rehabilitation [online].

Available at: http://www.jneuroengrehab.com/content/2/1/2 BrandZ, 2014 Global Top 100 brands [online]. Available at: http:// www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/brandz/ Greener, S., 2008. Business research methods. Ventus Publishing ApS. Research methodology, 2010. Deductive approach [online].

Available at: http://research-methodology.net/research-methodology/ research-approach/deductive-approach-2/ SAUNDERS, M., LEWIS, P. and THORNHILL, A., 2012. Research Methods for Business Students. 6th ed. United Kingdom: Pearson.

List of Illustration

Figure 1, BrandZ, 2014 Global Top 100 brands [online]. Available via: http://www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/brandz/ [Accessed 18 Mar 2015] fig.

Figure 2, BrandZ, 2014 Global Top 100 brands [online]. Available via: http://www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/brandz/ [Accessed 15 Mar 2015] fig Figure 3, BrandZ, 2014 Global Top 100 brands [online]. Available via: http://www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/brandz/ [Accessed 15 Mar 2015] fig Figure 4, own diagramed Figure 5, SAUNDERS, M., LEWIS, P. and THORNHILL, A., 2012.

Research Methods for Business Students. 6th ed. United Kingdom: Pearson. Fig. Figure 6, own diagramed 24

Figure 7, own diagramed

Images: Behance, 2013. Nike Adver t [online]. Available via: https:// www.behance.net/gallery/3890661/Nike-Vapor-IPhone-App-Advert [Accessed 15 Apr 2015] img.

Bof, 2015. Partnerships are key to taping wearable tech [online].

Available via: http://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/opinion/ partnerships-are-key-to-tapping-wearable-tech [Accessed 15 Apr 2015] img. ecouterre,2011. Uniqlo’s heattech clothing [online]. Available via: http://www.ecouterre.com/uniqlos-heattech-clothing-creates-heatfrom-yoursweat/uniqlo-heattech-6/ [Accessed 15 Apr 2015] img.

Nytimes, 2014. Is the player nervous? Just ask his shirt [online].

Available via: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/fashion/at-us-openralph-lauren-to-introduce-wearable-technology.html?_r=0 [Accessed 16 Apr 2015] img.

Radcollector, 2013. Adidas Skateboarding [online]. Available via: http://radcollector.com/news/tag/adidas/page/3/ [Accessed 15 Apr 2015] img.

Techco, 2014. Wearable technology [online]. Available via: http:// tech.co/tag/wearable-tech [Accessed 15 Apr 2015] img

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