Plus-Size Lady Fashion in Australia

TOPIC : PLUS-SIZE LADY FASHION IN AUSTRALIA
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WHAT – THE DESCRIPTION:
With high living standards in some countries such as: US, European continents, Australia,… has tended to increase the number of obese people. So my topic is ‘’plus –size lady fashion in Australia’’, I want to find out how this situation is and how fashion companies deal with growing weight trends in Australia, especially to ladies and how it’s going to be in the future, I start off by finding the answers for the questions below:
Main question:
What are current and potential needs of Australian lady for plus size fashion?
Sub-questions:
What are the average weight of Australia women and its trend?
What are the failure and successful companies in this area? What leads those results?
Have customers really satisfied with those supplies? Which aspects need to be improved?

WHY – RATIONAL:
Firstly, According to Australian Government’s research (2009,‘About Overweight and Obesity’, Department of Health and Ageing), the number of the obese women are going to increase remarkably in Australia. And obesity is an epidemic in Australia. It has showed that ‘’the rates of overweight and obesity amongst adults have doubled over the past two decades with Australia now being ranked as one of the fattest developed nations’’. This point also indicates that plus size fashion will have great market in next few year in Australian apparel industry. O 'Donnell, Jayne (2010, ‘Listening to a plus-size market’, Us today) stated that ‘US women two-thirds of the female population that is overweight or obese’, and the needs of plus-size (12, 14, 16) are massive. US is one of the nations which have enormous plus size consumers. According to Mintel- which is a worldwide leader of competitive media, product and consumer intelligence- (‘Size Matters - A quarter of UK Women Now Size 18 Or Above’, marketresearchworld.net) has showed that ‘in 2010, the UK market for plus-size clothing has never been bigger, with 45% growth in the plus-size womenswear market over the past five years’. It indicate that plus-size fashion needs has also increased significantly in Britian. It has provided some statistics about the amount of money the British ladies spent on plus-size fashion for the year, ‘the number of women taking plus-size clothing of the fashion market is expected to see unprecedented growth’. In addition, Anonymous (A. 2008, ‘lots of plus size women, few options; Monied niche demanding, with good reason’) said that ‘plus size fashion’ now account for one in five purchases in Canada 's $10.8-billion ladies apparel market, a 20 per cent increase since 2003’. This report once emphasizes the huge growth of plus size market. However, the over size customers today have required more fashionable styles than before, not just simple fit their body, they want to get more valuable products, not just stop at basic satisfaction. The question is whether fashion retailers and garment industry have satisfied customers with quantity and quality of product.
Secondly, the fact that the fashion standard of plus-size customers is getting higher while the retailers pay fewer attention on them, people always love to be confident with their clothing, proud of their appearance no matter what their weight. However, there are a lot of oversize people who experienced difficulties in finding the suitable clothing. According to Mintel, (‘grand future for plus-size fashion’, marketresearchworld.net), the plus size fashion market has missed out by designers, retailers, investors. In Australia, Melissa Singer (2010, ‘Plus-size fashion on steep earning curve’, The Sydney morning Herald) suggested that there is a growing oversize cusumers compare to the limitation of fashion supplies in Australia most of designers don’t look at the true that people are getting bigger. ' 'Designers shy away from having large women in their clothing because they perceive they don 't look as good as slim women ' '. Joanne Ellul (2010, ‘How the plus-size market is becoming a big deal’, Retail Week) came up with similar issues, some key questions of plus size market, target and end up with retailers deal to these growing demands slowly. In US, it seems to respond faster to this situation by a great of amount of plus size stores opened. Even though, oversize customers is potential market but they have been shopping with choices, requiring more value products, that is why there has been some winners and losers in this area. For instance,Walter, Ron (2003, ‘Some losers some winners’, Moose Jaw Times Herald) indicated that ‘Charming Shoppes, a U.S. retailer of women 's plus size fashion, fell by 55 per cent. Integrating a large chain, acquired in 2001, hurt the bottom line. Charming Shoppes, with 2,340 stores, opened 59 but closed 161 in the first nine months’. That’s the point which has motivated retailers to research market profoundly about their oversize customers.
Inclusion, there is growing number of oversize fashion cusumers, compare to supply limitation. Besides that, retailers have not paid enough attention on research oversize market which leads to the failure of some companies. The result of this research may provide a deeply perspective of plus-size fashion aspect in Australia particularly, other parts of the world generally and looking at what they have done and what not yet, from that it will come up with solutions that should be done to fill the gap.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES: REALISM & INTERPRETIVISM
This research is taken by realism and interpretivism perspectives. Firstly, Realism help the research more valuable because Realism assumes that what can be observed is what exists, and all that exists, and what is observed or considered to exist, acts independently to scientists and their activity. The realist shares with the Positivist conception of science as an empirically- based rational an objective enterprise, the purpose of which is to provide us with the true explanatory and predictive knowledge of nature.(Blaikie 2007). On the other hand, in the philosophy of perception, critical realism is the theory that some of our sense-data (for example, those of primary qualities) can and do accurately represent external objects, properties, and events, while other of our sense-data (for example, those of secondary qualities and perceptual illusions) do not accurately represent any external objects, properties, and events. In short, critical realism refers to any position that maintains that there exists an objectively knowable, mind-independent reality, whilst acknowledging the roles of perception and cognition. According to Blaikie (2007), the inspiration for the development of Realism in the social sciences came initially from Harre’s writing in the philosophy of science (1961, 1970, 1972). After that , two of his students at Oxford, Keat and Bhaskar, elaborated his ideas (Keat and Urry 1975; Bhaskar 1978). Like Harre, Bhaskar’s early work was concerned with the natural sciences, but both of them eventually turned their attention to the development of the realist scientific principles in the social sciences (Harre and Secord 1972; Harre 1974; Bhaskar 1979). While critical realism is now widely used to refer to Bhaskar’s work, it is inappropriate for Harre’s position. In spite of Harre being in the field much earlier than Bhaskar, the latter’s structuralist version will be discussed before the former’s constructionist version. Since Bhaskar made the first big steps in popularizing the theory of critical realism in the 1970s, it has become one of the major strands of social scientific method-rivalling positivism/empiricism, and post-structuralism/relativism/interpretivism.
The researchers have used the realism to explain what they observe and from that predict what are going on. Sometimes, they combine with other perspective theories to explain complex natural or social phenomenons. Therefore, the researchers can have broad view what is going on in the plus fashion market based on existing situation. From analyzing actual situation, they have forecasted for its future potential, recognize the opportunities as well as threats in this market.
Secondly, this research also uses interpretivism perspective to support. Interpretivism is a study of social phenomena, requiring an understanding of the social world that people have constructed, and continue activites. However, people are constantly involved in interpreting and reinterpreting their world through how they engage with each other and with other things-hence social worlds are already interpreted before social scientists begin. Therefore, social reality is not some ‘thing’ that may be interpreted in different ways by the researcher; it is made up of those interpretations. The task of the social researcher is to enter this everyday world in order to grasp the socially constructed meanings, and then reconstruct hem in a social scientific language. These accounts are regarded as re-description of every day accounts, which then are developed into theories (Blaikie, 2007)
Interpretivism aims to put neutral observations and universal laws into the application of social science research. To date the supporters of Interpretivism state that the specific meaning of objective things is constructed by social human thoughts. This perspective, that a variety of perceptions of the nature world can exist simultaneously (Schawandt, 1994).
This perspective gets the research involved and interacts with the subject means the research will analyze situation not only by observation but also through eyes and experiences of those involved. The researchers approach this topic by observe the surroundings, stores, buyers, etc. Besides that, they get involved in such as talking to customers, wholesales, manufactures, ect and pretend to be a customer or wholesales to understand what internal factors are affect directly to the situation.
These two perspectives seem to be perfect in harmony to make the research’s credibility.

METHODOLOGY: ETHNOGRAPY & ACTION RESEARCH
Ethnograpy is a research methodology that originated from the field of anthropology. Again, it is closely linked with theoretical perspectives of phenomenology, interpretivism and hermeneutics. Originally, ethnography was focused on studying an ‘intact’ cultural group in a nature setting during a prolonged period of time by collecting primarily, observational data (Leedy & Ormrod, 2005). This research use the ethnography to discovering cultural patterns in human behavior, beside the basic needs, Australian ladies are affected by Autralian culture, what make them different from others around the world and how to satisfy those needs. It is clearly that the Australian ladies has been familiar with using social media to access information, they use Facebook to know what other wear and put their comments about the brands, rather buying stuffs by online instead of going to the stores. Ethnography provides an analytical description of social scenes and groups that recreate for the reader the shared belief, practices, artefacts, folk knowledge and behaviours of those being studied. This approach can be applied for both macro and micro communities (countries to classrooms). Ethnography requires the researcher to have extended on-site interaction with participants- observing, interviewing and recording the processes that occur naturally. Collected data is in the form of participant observation, ethnographic interviews and artifact collection.
Other methodology which has been used in this research is action research. According to Cherry (1999), action research is ‘a continuous cycle of planning, action and review of the action’ (p.1). Action research is based on a cycle of action and reflection with various degrees of collaboration between the researchers and organization members. Action research helps the individual practitioner develop skills of reflective practice and can also help organization members develop a culture of enquiry as part of their work life, to develop learning organization or communities of enquiry. Action research involves working with people rather than on people, and through this action of researching together, its aim is transformation of the researcher, the researched and the context where the research is situated. It is a co-operative enquiry process and respects the rights and abilities of all participants to make meaningful contributions, including the formation of questions. The outcome of the research is the ongoing documentation of this process and a final written or visual documentation of it (Cherry, 1999). The research use this methodology to aim to bring about change in plus fashion market, increase knowledge and understanding on the part of the research or the client of both or about other countries in the world, how plus fashion market is and how they handle with that, whether they success or fail, some lessons can be learned from them.

METHODS:
With the theoretical perspectives and methodology above, this research was carried out by methods appropriately below: * About methods for data collection: * Participant observation * Structured interviews with informants * Document collection includes primary data source: blogs, records, reports, catalogues, etc and secondary data source: journal, book, newspapers) * Involves working with people rather than on people. * Action of researching together, its aim is transformation of the researcher, the researched and the context where the research is situated. * About methods for data analysis: * Event orientated * Structural indexing * Action oriented, eg. using design in practice * Ongoing documentation and reflection of research process

Frame timeline of the research stages: Stage | Objective | Timeline | 1 | Identifying and analyzing the situation | Week 1-2 : 7th March – 20th March, 2011 | 2 | Choosing and applying the methodology, . | Week 3-4: 21th March – 3th April, 2011 | 3 | Collecting data from various resources | Week 5-6: 4th April – 17th April, 2011 | 4 | Take courses of action : interview, participate in that situation. | Week 7-9: 18th April – 8th May, 2011 | 5 | Gathering and selecting information | Week 10-11: 9th May – 22th May, 2011 | 6 | Evaluate the process | Week 12: 23th May – 29th May, 2011 |

VALIDITY:
Validity to a research is important part to evaluate the value of the research, there are two main threats to validity are researcher bias and reactivity, they affect directly to the qualitative of the research.
Bias is any influence, condition or set of condition that singly or together distort the data. Bias that threat validity is the selection of data that fit the researcher’s existing theory or precomceptions and the selection of data that ‘stand out’ to the researcher. (Leedy,1993, p.213)
Reactivity is when the researcher variability become an unwanted cause of variability in the research outcome and it is more applicable in interview settings rather than observational studies in the field.
Understanding that, this research collects information based on a broad and credible resources, getting information and analyzing it through realism and interpretivism perspective to assure a properly logic process, therefore the researcher can avoid the bias which could be occurred by the selection of data that fit the researcher’s existing theory or preconceptions. Acknowledge the information from various resources make the research more valuable and credible. Moreover, the research was carried by the combination of observation and interview, by experiencing involved in situation and getting perspectives from others such as: existing customers, salespersons, factory managers, merchandisers, professors, etc.

ETHIC:
When undertaking this research, the issue of ethics is a critical point to consider. The researcher’s effort to maintain of others privacy such as avoiding ask the private question and respecting the sensitive secret, because this research is about plus size fashion, it is sensitive to mention about the lady’s weight, this research assure to not mention the private issues, but still assure of the qualitive research.
Informed consent of participants, avoiding coercion of participants was taken during the process. Moreover, the research will provide the participants the information of people in the same situation, how about their perspectives, help them have other considerations of the issues. On the other hand, the result of the research may lead to the solutions for the merchandisers, investors to increase their business in this field.

SUMARRY:
In general, the research with the purpose to find out what current and potential needs of Australian lady for plus size fashion are. The research was carrying out by Realism and Interpretism perspectives aims to make the research credible and valuable. During research, the researcher assures the variability as well as the ethic of research process. Understanding how this situation is, the research may come up with some useful solutions for that appropriately. The answers for research questions will offer the benefits for society, helping the supply meet the society’s needs, creating the relationship between participants. This also means the customers may get more quality and valuable products. It can be considered as a part to contribute the standard of life.

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References: * Walter, Ron, 2003, ‘Some losers some winners’, Moose Jaw Times Herald, Jan 2003 , p.p4, viewed 26 March 2011.