Life-Style Segmentation in Apparel Marketing

Unlike established packaged goods, decisions in the apparel industry involve a long lead time and high risk. Can any type of market research prove useful in reducing potential loss? An increasingly wider application of life style market segmentation techniques in packaged goods, such as soaps, foods, drugs, etc., have helped marketers in all major aspects of market planning and management.' Yet very few applications of market segmentation techniques have been made in apparel marketing, an area in which the long advance timing in product design and manufacturing decision, along with the unpredictability of fashion shifts, has generally discouraged such experimentation.