Ethnography Proposal: Study of How Men and Women Shop for Clothing

Group members include:
Chris Kam (myself)
Steven Hennessey

For our ethnography, we've decided to look at the culture of shopping for clothing in Post Oak Mall. We want to separate our results into two groups, men and women. As men, we feel like we have very different shopping habits than women, and we want to try and find a way to quantify that data.


Being in a predominantly college town, we expect to mainly study people in their early twenties. We are choosing to conduct our study in stores that have both men's and women's clothing, as it will probably be easier for us to "blend" into the environment. A few examples that we know of off the top of our heads are: EXPRESS, Abercrombie, Aeropostale, The Buckle, GAP, American Eagle, and Hollister. 


We expect to learn more about how people shop and how they arrive to their clothing purchases. We will go into these stores and passively observe others as they shop, and to an extent--try on clothing. Based on our data, one person will probably be in charge of watching the registers while the other person will roam the store. Since we will not be talking/disturbing the customers, we need to come up with a good way to take notes. We will probably use small notebooks and refer to customers by some code based on what they're wearing. "F-WS-J" could be "Female, white shirt, jeans". We can do this to corroborate the fitting room data and the realized sales data.


Quantitative data that we wish to record:

• How many people use coupons? Does this differ by sex?
• How many people try on specific articles of clothing vs. outfits? Does this differ by sex?
• How long do people spend in the fitting rooms? Does this differ by sex?
• How often are people likely to buy something if they have visited the fitting room?
• Are men or women more likely to ask for help from a sales associate?
• How many pieces of clothing do people buy per transaction? Does this differ by sex?

Qualitative data that we wish to record:

• Do sales associates actively offer help?
• What type of music is being played? Does this affect the moods of the shopper?

We hope to come to conclusions about how people shop and why they buy the things they do. This information can be important to HCI in regards to learning consumer behavior and the impact of different selling techniques.