EXAMINATION OF WORKING CLASS WOMEN’S PROSPECTS AND POST PATRONAGE FULFILLMENT WITH TAILORING FACILITIES IN ADAMAWA STATE, NIGERIA
ABSTRACT
This study analyzes working class women‟s expectation and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Adamawa State, Nigeria. Survey research design was adopted for the study. Four objectives, four research questions, as well as four null hypotheses were developed for the study. One of the objectives of the study is to determine the relationship between accurate body measurement based on proportion expected by working class women from tailoring services for Post Patronage Satisfaction in Yola Metropolis; where working class women and tailors constitute the accessible population for the study. The population comprises of 256 tailors and 1225 working class women, Purposive sampling, was used in selecting 120 respondents. A 40 items questionnaire was developed by the researcher which consisted of 20 covers expectations and 20 covers satisfaction was used for data collection for the study. The instrument was pilot tested in Samaru, Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient was used to test the internal consistency of the instrument. Person product moment correlation (PPMC) was used in testing the null hypotheses of the study at 0.05 level of significance. The statistical computation was done using Software Package for Social Sciences (SPSS, version 21). One of the findings of the study indicated that the working class women expectation on body measurement has relationship with Post Patronage Satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis. The result indicated that the respondent has agreed, based on the cumulative mean of 2.9391 which is greater than the bench mark of 2.50. Based on the hypotheses tested there is relationship between body measurement and Post Patronage Satisfaction, and p-value of 0,000. The p-value (0.000) was less than 0.05, this is indicating that there is significance relationship between body measurement and PostPatronage Satisfaction. Some of the recommendations based on the findings of this study is that tailors should put more effort to meet expectations of working class women on body measurement of garment since their expectation influence post patronage satisfaction, Tailors in the study area should be well acquainted with latest styles in other to meet the use of clients as it will influence perceived post patronage satisfaction with the tailoring services in yola metropolis, Tailors ought to strive hard to keep to promises made to customers on garments finishing to enhance post patronage satisfaction of working class women with tailoring services in yola metropolis.
OPERATIONAL DEFINITION OF TERMS
DJELLABA: Djellaba is a big long loose-fitted unisex outer robe with full sleeves,
worn in the Maghreb region of North Africa
POST PATRONAGE SATISFACTION: is said to be when customers (working class
women) are satisfied with services offered by providers (tailors) which make customers (working class women) to return to repatronize the producers.
PUCKERING: is an undesired pleat as a result of excess fabric which appear in sewing
together two pieces of cloth which may open with age.
STITCH DENSITY; refers to the total number of loops in a measured area of fabric and
not to the length of the yarn in a loop. It is the total number of needle loops in a given area such as ten square centimeters.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover Page i
Title Page ii
Declaration iii
Certification iv
Dedication v
Acknowledgment vi
Table of Contents vii
List of Tables ix
List of appendices x
Abstract xi
Operational Definition of Terms xii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem 5
1.3 Objectives of the Study 6
1.4 Research Questions 7
1.5 Research Hypotheses 7
1.6 Significance of the Study 8
1.7 Basic Assumption 9
1.8 Delimitation of the Study 9
CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF RELATED LITRATURE
2.1 Theoretical Framework 10
2.1.1 Assumption of Expectation and Disconfirmation Theory 11
2.1.2 Relevance of Expectation and Disconfirmation Theory 12
2.1.3 Limitation of Expectation and Disconfirmation Theory 14
2.2 Conceptual Framework 14
2.2.1 History of Tailoring Business 14
2.2.2 History of Tailoring Business in Nigeria 17
2.2.3 Measures to Enhance Tailoring Business 19
2.3 Body Measurement 21
2.3.1 Point to Consider while Taking body Measurements 22
2.4 Garment Design and Styles 23
2.5 Garment Finishing 25
2.6 Working Class Women 28
2.7 Post Patronage Satisfaction 29
2.8 Nexus between Working Class Women and Post Patronage Satisfaction 30
2.8.1 Working Class Women Expectations with Tailoring Services 31
2.8.2 Importance of Garment Finishing Techniques in Post
Patronage Satisfaction 32
2.8.3 Challenges Working Class Women Face with Tailors 34
2.9 Review of Related Empirical Studies 35
2.10 Summary of the Reviewed Literature and Gap in Literatures 40
CHAPTER THREE: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1 Research Design 42
3.2 Population for the Study 42
3.3 Sample size and Sampling Technique 43
3.4 Instrument for Data Collection 44
3.4.1 Validation of the Instrument 45
3.4.3 Pilot Study 45
3.4.3 Reliability of the Instrument 45
3.5 Procedure for Data Collection 46
3.6 Procedure for Data Analysis 46
CHAPTER FOUR: DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
4.1. Respondents Demographic Data 47
4.2 Answers Research Question 49
4.3 Testing Hypotheses 53
4.4 Summary of Findings 57
4.5 Discussion of Findings 58
CHAPTER FIVE: SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Summary of the Study 62
5.2 Conclusion 63
5.3 Contribution to Knowledge 64
5.4 Recommendations 64
5.5 Suggestions for Further Study 65
References 66
Appendices 73
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Tailoring is the art of designing, cutting, fitting and finishing clothes. The word Tailor comes from the French “Tailler” and meaning to cut and appear in English Language during the fourteenth century. in Latin, the word taiolor was originally called “Sartor” meaning patches or menders, hence the English “Sartorial” or relating to tailor, tailoring or tailored clothing (Kim and Darnhost, 2010).
Tailoring also refers to the business process of making clothes with the use of technical skills and styles for individuals and society. The service of a tailor is important because humans need to wear clothes. Thus, the rapid increase of population provides important opportunity for the tailoring sector to thrive. In as much as clothing is one of the essential needs of man, there are expectations and satisfaction that comes with it, every customer that wants to sew a dress is concerned with the style, quality of material and how the finished work will improve the individuals image.
The tailor‟s functions in taking accurate body measurements includes, interpret clothing style, construction of adequate garment to meet taste of the customer, ability to adhere to client choice of style, use appropriate stitches and seams, proper finishing of garments and gaining confidence of the customer through meeting expectations. The clients of tailors are the people that patronize the tailors to make dress and these people include the working class women.
The working class women are those who work for paid jobs and are away from home for over five hours and not less than five days in a week. The working class women can also be said to be those gainfully employed fifteen or more hours per week. The working class women used in the present study are the female secondary school teachers in Yola metropolis of Adamawa state, Nigeria. These working class women needs a number of clothing to cater for their personality and different functions during the day. This makes the working class women patronage tailors to satisfy their expectations. Quality, styles, accurate measurement, qualitative design especially on long lasting fabrics as well as neat finishing are the expectations every working class woman looks out for in terms of dressing, although this differs from individual taste and preference. For this reason, working class women are always on the look for reliable tailors who can deliver the services they aim to achieve in garment making.
Patronage is the power to confer favours for providers and receivers/clients to form a network through which access to various resources are obtained. Post patronage satisfaction may be conceived as a measure of the extent to which service delivery efforts brings about a customer‟s return to re-patronize an organization due to the customers met expectation. Post patronage could also be negative, which in turn makes the customer not to return back to re-patronize due to unmet expectation.
The working class women expects accurate body measurement proportionate to their body size, adhering to their styles of choice, constructing appropriate garments to meet their taste, use of appropriate stitches and seams as well as proper and neat finishing from their tailors. When the above mentioned are not met up with, there is dissatisfaction leading the change of tailors instead of coming back to re-patronize them. The satisfaction of a working class woman plays significant role in patronage of tailor, because if the tailor offers services to the expectation of the working class woman, there is a high chances of her coming back to the tailor. This therefore, means that services offered to the working class woman must be of high standard and meet up to the required expectation at all times.
The researcher during the conduct of the present study discovered there is always disagreement between working class women and tailors, the tailors are not meeting up with the working class women expectations on the dress made probably because the garment is not seating well on the body, furthermore, the sleeve, waistline and hip area could be too tight or too loose, all these could bring dissatisfaction on the working class women. The inappropriate fit could be due to the tailor‟s lack of skill on how to take body measurement that is based on body proportion. Forster (2014) stated that, body measurement should be taken to ensure a good fit, you must first of all look at the most important part of the fitting process which is to thoroughly observe the body before taking accurate body measurement. Getting a good fit is choosing the right styles for individual. Good styles are clothes that women want to wear, the comfortability and lifestyles are required, but tailors fail in several ways by not taking the accurate and proportioned body measurement and eventually the styles are not fitting. Survey by the researcher on some garment making workshop reveals that the rate at which tailors spoil fabric given to them to sew are really on the increase. Many incident occurs with sewn garment, this is because tailors are too eager to finish so many works in one day and so they collect too many clothes from clients and keep under the table and make fake service delivery dates. Working class women expectations is that tailors should posse‟s qualities such as reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.
Reliability is concerned with an outcome of a service. Reliability is a key in meeting customer expectations which is to deliver the result as promised. Tailor fail in proper service delivery in the sense that they make clothes not to working class women‟s expectation. The employed women expects tailor to make cloths that fits the body accurately and proportionately. The design should come out according to working class women‟s desire and the finishing should look clean. Nevertheless, tailors fail to create time for fitting before final finishing and this affects post patronage.
McDougall and Levesque (2000) argued that post patronage satisfaction occurs when customers are satisfied with products and services offered by providers and producers, which warrants customers to come back for more. Customer satisfaction plays significant role in post patronage of goods and services, in the sense that if goods and services offered are up to expectation, then there is every tendency for high level of customer satisfaction. On the other hand, be that as it may, poor services or products results in low satisfaction. In the same vein, the ability to satisfy consumers is one of the greatest tasks for service providers (Bassey, Okon & Umorok, 2011). It takes much to guarantee customer‟s satisfaction. It therefore means that services or product offered must be of high standard and meets the required expectations at all times. Standards and expectations differ for different category of people. In every society, there are classifications that distinguish one person from the other.
In view of this categorizations or classifications, there are certain expectations that are required from people in each category. In respect to this, working class women are considered a class that demands qualitative services and products especially in the world of fashion. When it comes to fashion, women stand out significantly and constitute a large percentage of patronage. According to Bassey et al (2011), Women constitute a group of people in the society who engage in meaningful activities in various spheres of human endeavors. The working class women are not completely under the control of circumstances that can impede their progress and standards. Women, possess certain characteristics, which to a large extent enable them to contribute meaningfully to the development of the society. Also, large populations of these women are literate, capable of communicating and interacting at the same level with their male counterparts. This category of women exhibits certain level of social relevance in the society with high demands and expectation. One of such area that they have high expectation for is in fashion. This is because women and fashion cannot be separated and apart from that, throughout history, fashion has greatly influenced the “fabric” of societies all over the world. What people wear often characterizes who they are and what they do for a living.
Women‟s involvement in fashion has a long history (Heskett, 1997). Fashion is an area that women pay particular attention to. Thus, to a large extent their social status, caliber and personality depend on it. In view of this the research inrtends to carry out a research on the analysis of working class womens expectations and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Adamawa State, Nigeria. From the highlighted variables, this study was conducted to analyse working class women expectation and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
Over the years tailoring business has contributed immensely to the economy of Adamawa state and Nigeria as a whole in terms of creating jobs and reducing the rate of unemployment. Adamawa state is vibrant in tailoring services with teeming population of skilled tailors. In spite of this, the issues of poor service delivery leading to low customer satisfaction has been recorded. Some of those affected by the poor service delivery are working class women. Research shows that bulk of complains come from female working class women who are concerned about the inability of tailors to meet the increasing demands and high expectations. The working class women complained about
fitting, styling, and finishing.
The increasing number of working class women accompanied by increasing interest in fashion, make most working women admire garments worn by their colleagues and try to copy the style through their tailors. In a situation where the tailors are unable to come out with exact style meant for the fabric, working class women resolve to patroniozing another tailor instead of coming back again. The researcher has also had the opportunity to witness the disagreement arising in a tailor‟s shop with a customer. The disagreement came as a result of changing style by the tailor, the shape of the garment is not fitting, there was puckering and the stitch is not dense.
The researcher also observed that when working class women give instructions on how tailors should bring out the styles, designs, finishings, the tailors takes the body measurement and yet they don‟t produce to the women‟s satisfaction. Therefore the researcher wants to establish weather expectations of the working class women are actually met.
1.3 Objectives of the Study
The major objective of this study is to analyze working class women‟s expectation and post patronage satisfaction in tailoring services in Adamawa. The specific objectives include:
- to determine the functions of accurate body measurement in meeting the expectation of working class women and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola Metropolis;
- to determine the relationship between the expected styles by working class women and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis.
- to determine the relationship between garments finishing expectation of working class women and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola Metropolis.
- to determine the relationship between garments design expectation of working class women and post patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola
Metropolis.
1.4 Research Questions
The following research questions were raised for the study.
- To what extent does accurate body measurement expected by working class women relates to post-patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis?
- To what extent does expected styles of working class women relates to postpatronage satisfaction in Yola metropolis?
- To what extent does garments finishing expectation of working class women relates to post-patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis?
- To what extent does garments design expectation of working class women relates to post-patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
On the basis of the research questions, the following hypotheses were formulated:
Ho1: Expected body measurement of working class women has no significant relationship with Post- patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis.
Ho2: Expected garment styles of working class women has no significant relationship with Post-patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis.
Ho3: Expected finishing of garment of working class women has no significant relationship with post-patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis.
Ho4: Expected garments design of working class women has no significant relationship with post-patronage satisfaction with tailoring services in Yola metropolis.
1.6 Significance of the Study
The findings of this study will be beneficial to clothing designers, working class women, tailors and stakeholders in the fashion industry as well as Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with basic informations on entrepreneurship.
Tailors will benefit from the findings of this study in the sense that a clearer picture of the essence of post patronage satisfaction and its importance in business sustenance and development would be pointed out. The findings of this study will assist clothing designers to understand the expectations of customers (working class women) in articulating the designs placed on fabrics and will also improve their knowledge on the importance of service delivery basically prompt delivery, the tailors and fashion designer will get assess to this work through the chairman of tailors association, Yola chapter who will be given a copy of the work.
To working class women, the findings would bring about better ideas on styles, shapes and garment finishing expectations for their post patronage satisfaction. And will also enlighten them on how to properly deal with tailors. The study would create knowledge baseline on attitude, ethics and motivations of tailors in order to enhance the understanding of how these factors affect service delivery through libraries where this work will be on the shelves.
Apart from contributing significantly to the body of knowledge in home economics, this study would be beneficial to Institutions where clothing and textile is studied. Also, stakeholders in the fashion industry, saddled with the responsibilities of formulating policy and regulation, will have first-hand knowledge on tailoring and post patronage satisfaction through this study which will be uploaded in the internet and other research libraries within the area.
Furthermore, there are non-governmental organizational agencies that assist young entrepreneur especially in setting up skills acquisition businesses who can also benefit from this study. This study would go a long way in creating a platform for sensitization and awareness on the need for tailors to be diligent and trustworthy in their daily business dealings especially with working class women.
1.7Basic Assumption
This research was based on the following assumptions:
Working class women experience challenges from tailors which leads to low post patronage in Yola metropolis.
- Working class women’s post patronage satisfaction affects tailoring business in Yola Metropolis.
- There will be measures taken to enhance post patronage satisfaction of working class women in tailoring in Yola Metropolis.
1.8 Delimitation of the Study
This study was limited to Yola metropolis. This is because, there is increase of tailors and fashion designers as well as working class women who constitute the population of this study. It was also delimited to Yola metropolise as the state capital to represent the state as a whole. The present study was also delimited to secondary school female teachers who have ten years and above experience and are not less than forty five years of age. Also, in conceptual terms, this study was delimited to analyzing post patronage satisfaction and expectation as it affects working class women (teachers) in Yola metropolis.
EXAMINATION OF WORKING CLASS WOMEN’S PROSPECTS AND POST PATRONAGE FULFILLMENT WITH TAILORING FACILITIES IN ADAMAWA STATE, NIGERIA