Determinant of Age as a Demographic Segmentation Practice on Consumer Choice of Ready to Wear Clothes in Kenya.

Abstract

Segmentation is division of a large market into smaller homogeneous market targets on the basis of common needs and/or similar lifestyles. Demographic analysis can cover whole societies, or groups defined by criteria such as age, nationality, religion, and ethnicity. In order to overcome the stiff competition of ready to wear clothes, businesses ought to understand their market characteristics. This study sought to fill the existing knowledge gap by focusing on age as demographic segmentation practice on consumer choice of ready to wear clothes. The study focused on the influence of age on consumer choice of ready to wear clothes in Kenya. A descriptive survey design was used to obtain in-depth information from respondents and purposive sampling used to select ready to wear shops from the three cities in Kenya namely: Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu. A sample of 83 respondents from ready to wear entrepreneur shops were selected from the three cities. It was observed that older consumers are less responsive to fashion change hence affecting their readiness to consume ready to wear clothing. It is recommended that ready to wear clothes entrepreneurs should engage in population market survey to optimize their sales. There was a significant relationship between age and consumer choice of ready to wear clothes as shown by a regression coefficient of 0.605.