Cognitive Strategies to Describe Warm and Cool Appearances

Analysis of apparel was considered from the viewpoint of how consumers conceptualized experiences with the product. The objective was to determine where commonalities occurred in how 100 female subjects described a warm or cool appearance. Subjects responded to two pairs of openended questions and a nine-point scale of 41 word pairs. A paired t-test was used to compare differences in response to the word pairs for a warm and cool context. Differences significant at .001 occurred for 36 of the 41 word pairs and at 01 for 2 word pairs. Subjects also differentiated between a warm or cool appearance by using a limited number of common categories in open responses and well-defined, parallel response patterns.