| Abstract: | This study was designed to determine the effect knowledge has on the types of information cues used to evaluate clothing quality. Students ranked the importance of 24 product attributes for evaluating clothing quality before beginning a 15‐week university course on evaluation of clothing products and again at the conclusion of the course. Most (64%) of the intrinsic cues were ranked significantly higher on the pretest than post‐test and many of the extrinsic (75%) and aesthetic (67%) cues rated significantly lower. There were no differences in the ranking of the performance cues. However, caution should be taken when interpreting the results of the study. Although all of the cues ranked significantly higher in the post‐test were intrinsic cues, when evaluating the relative ranking of the cues in the pretest and post‐test, there were few differences. The same five aesthetic cues were in the top third on both tests and the same six intrinsic cues were in the bottom third on both tests. The findings of this study suggest that knowledge does influence how consumers evaluate quality and additional research that focuses on the effect of knowledge in consumers’ evaluation of clothing quality is needed. |
