ATTRIBUTES CONTRIBUTING TO PERCEIVED CUSTOMER VALUE IN THE CZECH CLOTHING ON-LINE SHOPPING

This paper, based on the literature study, presents findings of the research focused on the concept of customer value in on-line shopping for clothes. It examines and identifies attributes of perceived customer value in terms of benefits and sacrifices by applying a multi-attribute model. Customer value concept used in the research was defined and measured in terms of functional and affective dimensions. The perception of selected customer value attributes was measured as customer satisfaction, i.e. as a result of a congruence between the perceived and evaluated reality (benefits and sacrifices offered by on-line shopping), and customer expectations. The attributes evaluated the best were those that contributed to customer satisfaction the most and thus represented important attributes of customer value dimensions. In total, 25 attributes considered to be important for on-line shopping were selected for the questionnaire and explored further in the primary research. A principal components analysis and orthogonal Varimax rotation were used in the analysis to obtain factors that respondents considered to be attributes of the perceived customer value for shopping clothes on-line. The factor analysis identified six dimensions of perceived customer value toward shopping clothes on-line: three factors (web site appearance, shipping and product presentation) are functional and can be attributed to the benefits that customers expect to get when shopping clothes on-line, the other three extracted factors (annoyance, assurance and trust) are affective and risk related ones, and can be labelled as attributes of sacrifice. The number of identified customer value attributes perceived differently by on-line shoppers according to their gender, age, education and shopping behaviour was very low. This means that clothing online market is rather homogenous. The future research will show whether the identified differences will form the base for customer segmentation of the Czech clothing on-line market.