The Influence of Subjective Knowledge on the Perception of Organic Cotton Clothing

This research project was designed to study whether consumers’ subjective knowledge on organic cottons influences their attitude toward organic cotton clothing and intention to buy organic cotton clothing. Also researched, was whether the subjective knowledge of the consumer on organic cottons influences the importance the consumer places on label specification attributes commonly found in organic cotton clothing. An online survey was developed to measure the key variables including the two sets of choice-based conjoint modeling for mandatory and auxiliary label specifications. A total of 941 people responded to the survey, with 498 people completing the survey. The 498 respondents were segmented into three different groups based on their level of knowledge on organic cottons: High; Medium; and Low. The results of the ANOVAs revealed that the differences in buying intention and attitude toward organic cotton clothing were significant across the three knowledge segments. The knowledge “high” segment was more likely to buy organic cotton clothing regardless of prices and was more positive in their attitude toward organic cotton clothing than were the other two segments. The results of the MANOVAs revealed that the knowledge “low” segment considered product-specific attributes more important while the knowledge “high” segment placed more importance on the attributes pertaining to sustainability.