Young Indonesian Muslim women consumer behavior toward modest sportswear

Women modest sportswear has stepped up the industry of the modest fashion. The emerging economy, combined with the most significant Muslim population, has become the main attraction of Indonesia as a market for this particular fashion style. The purpose of this study is to determine motivating factors which affect the behavior of Indonesian Muslim women in buying modest sportswear by employing The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). Expectation, perception, the subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and consume’s attitude toward modest apparel during sport, and purchase intention are the factors to be examined. By employing a Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), the analysis proclaimed that the effects of expectation, perception and the subjective norm on consumer’s attitude toward modest apparel during sport are confirmed. The result given by perceived behavioral control on purchase intention is higher than the subjective norm. The subjective norm is also being confirmed to affect perceived behavioral control. Further managerial implications are discussed. Corresponding author: Leonnard Email addresses for the corresponding author: leonnard.ong@ipmi.ac.id First submission received: 19th October 2018 Revised submission received: 13th December 2018 Accepted: 10th January 2019 1. The Introduction Modest fashion is one of the most promising industry. Thomson Reuters, in Collaboration with Dinar Standard (2017) estimated that the whole market was valued at USD 243 billion and projected to be USD 368 billion in 2021. From 2014 to 2015, the growth for modest fashion was 5.7 %, which was 2.2 % higher than the global market growth. Indonesian spent approximately USD 13.28 billion in this category in 2015, and it was the fifth highest value in the world, after Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Indonesia composes of 12.7 % of the world’s Muslim population, which embeds it as the largest Muslim-majority country in the world. Approximately 87 % of the country’s total population is Muslim (CIA, 2016). Aside from the fact that modest apparel is mandatory for Muslim, the concept of modesty for activities that require agility such as sports is still limited. Sportswear’s should be designed to deliver functions, comfort, and safety of its wearers, depicted by the usual sportswear that overthrow skin and body line exposure which conflict the Muslim women dress rules. Despite the challenge, the modest sportswear market is very potential. The high desire of Muslim women to participate in any sport activity requires innovative sportswear, suitable fabric, and higher aesthetic values (Yazid, 2016). The well-known brands such as Nike and Marks & Spencer, Veilgarments, Capsters, ResportOn, and Natasha are trying to penetrate this market (Yazid, 2016; Ahmed, 2017; Hosie, 2018). Besides the apparel designs, proper marketing strategies are required to lead the competition in the industry. An analysis of the purchasing behavior of modest sportswear is very potential to provide information and insights in terms of the motivation of young Muslim women to purchase modest sportswear. Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 277 Although there are increasing number of studies discussing motivating factors affecting consumers’ behavior of clothing products, sportswear, green shoes, and luxury goods (Nam, Dong, and Lee, 2017; Kim and Karpova, 2009; Ting, Goh, and Isa, 2016; and Xu, Chen, Burman, and Zhao, 2014) as well as halal products (Lada, Harvey Tanakinjal, and Amin, 2009; Hussain, Rahman, Zaheer, and Saleem, 2016; Khalek, 2014; Shah Alam, Mohd, and Hisham, 2011; and Briliana and Mursito, 2017). However, according to the knowledge of the authors, there are no studies that analyzed its effect on modest sportswear. Therefore, this study fills the gap of purchasing behavior of modest sportswear by examining the effect of expectation, perception, subjective norms, perceived behavioral controls, and consumers’ attitudes toward modest apparel during sport. 2. Literature Review 2.1. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) The Theory of planned behavior (TPB) is the most widely used theory to explain the motivating factors that affect an individual to perform specified acts. This theory is a continuation of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). According to this theory, the specific intention is influenced by the attitude toward the product, the subjective norm and the perceived behavioral control (Ajzen, 1991). The higher the individual’s purpose toward a particular behavior, the higher the probability that the response will be performed. The use of this theory on fashion industry has been carried out in several products, such as fashion counterfeits (Kim and Karpova, 2009; Fernandes, 2013), luxury goods (Phau, Teah, and Chuah, 2015; Jain, Khan, and Mishra, 2017; Jain and Khan, 2017), green shoes and apparel (Nam, Dong, and Lee, 2017; Bong ko and Jin, 2017). Nam, Dong, and Lee (2017) modified the theory by providing expectation and perception variables following Tseng and Hung (2013) on green sportswear. The modification conforms to the consumer satisfaction model by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) where an individual will only be satisfied with a product if an individual perception of actual product’s performance exceeds personal expectation. The satisfied individual will lead to purchase intention. Previous studies have proven this relationship (Leonnard, Daryanto, Sukandar, and Yusuf, 2015; Leonnard, 2017; Leonnard. 2018; Leonnard and Susilowati, 2018; Leonnard, 2018). Therefore, in this study, we adopted a modified theory of planned behavior with the contribution of expectation and perception selected from Nam, Dong, and Lee (2017) on modest sportswear. 2.2 Expectation The expectation is a belief and expectation of an individual in terms of the benefits and advantages of a product that could be the resulted from prior purchases, word of mouth (WOM), or mass media (Lee, Lee, Chuang, and Wu, 2014). When consumers find the benefits are higher than their expectations after purchasing the products, satisfaction will generate. Conversely, when the perceived benefits are lower than their expectations, it will create dissatisfaction. Satisfaction will lead to positive attitudes toward products (Nam, Dong, and Lee, 2017; Leonnard and Susilowati, 2018; Leonnard and Susanti, 2018) and repurchase intention (Leonnard, 2018). Conversely, dissatisfaction will result in negative attitudes toward products and repurchase intention. In consideration of the prior research, the hypotheses to be tested are: H1: Customer’s expectation positively affects consumer’s attitude toward modest sportswear. H2: Customer’s expectation positively affects consumer’s purchase intention. 2.3 Perception Perception is defined as the perception of actual product performance (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1985; Zeithaml, 1988). The actual product performance is a consumer evaluation of the quality of the products they receive after purchase (Gronroos, 1982). The assessment may include evaluation of materials, facilities, human resources (Sasser, Olsen, and Wyckoff, 1978), technical or functional qualities (Gronroos, 1982), and 10 service quality dimensions suggested by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) including responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding customers, and tangibles. In this study, the evaluation of product quality follows Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) and Nam, Dong, and Lee (2017) consisting of tangibles and reliabilities. The previous studies have indicated a positive relationship between perception, consumer attitudes (Nam, Dong, and Lee, 2017; Diallo and Seck, 2018), purchase intention of apparel (Lee, Kim, Journal of Business and Retail Management Research (JBRMR), Vol. 13 Issue 4 July 2019 www.jbrmr.com A Journal of the Academy of Business and Retail Management (ABRM) 278 Seock, and Cho, 2009; Erdil, 2015; Hsu and Hsu, 2017), purchase intention of counterfeit luxury goods (Kim and Karpova, 2010), and purchase intention of green shoes (Nam, Dong, and Lee, 2017). In consideration of the prior research, the hypotheses to be tested are: H3: Customer’s perception positively affects consumer’s attitude toward modest sportswear. H4: Customer’s perception positively affects consumer’s purchase intention. 2.4 Subjective norms Subjective norms are social factors in the form of public, families, and respected people, which enforce someone into performing certain behaviors (Ajzen, 1991). It is necessary to consider the subjective norms as part of a power that affects specific considerations to make a purchase. Using modest apparel while doing any sport activity is considered to be one of the social controls for Muslim women. Mokhlis (2009) stated that religion is one of the social institutions that have the most significant impact in affecting the value and behavior of individuals. In the management and marketing perspectives, Muslim consumers tend to choose products that conform to their religious controls such as halal food (Khalek, 2014, Said et al., 2014), halal tourism (El-Gohary, 2015; Eid and El-Gohary, 2015) and halal cosmetics (Briliana and Mursito, 2017). In the case of sportswear, this study sets modesty as a criterion of sportswear selection for Muslim women. Modest apparel is widely known as a way of dressing, which avoids sexual attraction (Oxford Dictionaries, 2017). In the study of the development and function of clothing and adornment, modesty becomes one of the theories of the origins of clothing. This theory argues that the original purpose of clothing is to conceal the genital organs from a sense of shame, embarrassment, or some other form of sexual emotion (Dunlap, 1928). One of the ways to see the ev