Swear words for sale

Swearing has traditionally been associated with spoken language; however, swear words are appearing more often in print and, notably, explicitly featured in commercial products. In this paper, we consider this development an example of the commodification of swear words, or ‘swear words for sale’. Our analyses of English-language swear word products show that the taboo nature of swear words is exploited and capitalized upon for commercial gain. We argue that swear word commodities trade on sociolinguistically incongruous aspects of swear word usage, increasing salability of the swear word products by targeting specific demographics. Specifically, we analyze (1) women’s apparel and accessories, (2) domestic items and home décor, and (3) children’s products for adults or articles targeting parents of young children. The study concludes with a discussion of whether the popularization of swearing via such commodification may ultimately result in a loss of distinctiveness and devaluation.

Proposed Digital Marketing Strategy for Muslim Women’s Fashion Brand (Arra Style)

Arra Style is a small and medium enterprise of women fashion brand in Indonesia initiated in November 2016, producing and selling Muslim women’s apparel. In 2019, along with the declining numbers of Tanah Abang visitors, the sales of Arra Style also decreased since the brand simply relied on sales of Tanah Abang in-store transaction and WhatsApp. To adapt to changing customer behavior, Arra Style needs to adopt the existing technology and implement digital marketing. By conducting interviews with the internal and external stakeholders, the author proposed digital marketing strategies through communication channel strategies and sales channel strategies. These strategies are based on the classification of customer journey through the 5A funnel.

Women’s Descriptive Representation and Gendered Import Tax Discrimination

We identify a form of gender-based governmental discrimination that directly affects billions of women on a daily basis: the setting of import tariffs for gendered goods. These tax rates, which can differ across otherwise identical gender-specific products, often impose direct penalties on women as consumers. Comparing nearly 200,000 paired tariff rates on men’s and women’s apparel products in 167 countries between 1995 and 2015, we find that women suffer a tax penalty that varies systematically across countries. We demonstrate that in democracies, women’s presence in the legislature is associated with decreased import tax penalties on women’s goods. This finding is buttressed by a comparison of democracies and non-democracies and analyses of the implementation of legislative gender quotas. Our work highlights a previously unacknowledged government policy that penalizes women and also provides powerful evidence that descriptive representation can have a substantial, direct impact on discriminatory policies.

Classy Styles Ltd., Inc.: shifting production overseas

Theoretical basis The main theoretical models used in the instructor manual analysis are SWOT and institution-based view. Founder’s syndrome is also used as a foundation for analysis and discussion. Research methodology Primary source data acquired by the authors through one of the author’s actual experience working in the family business that is the subject of the case. Case overview/synopsis Classy Styles Ltd., Inc. is a small wholesaler of women’s apparel. It outsources production and sells to small retail stores. Classy Styles has grown steadily during its short existence, but is not on track to reach the CEO and majority shareholder’s profitability goal. The COO has determined that the only realistic way to achieve the goal is to shift manufacturing from North America to Asia. The decision creates tension between profitability and the CEO’s desire for tight supervision and control of the outsourced production shops. Complexity academic level Introductory undergraduate courses in general management would be sufficient, while a basic strategy course and/or entrepreneurial business course would be of benefit.

Apparent Comparative Advantage and Development Space in Women’s Apparel Trade

This study investigates the apparent comparative advantage of the world’s top five women’s apparel exporters in order to anticipate the development of future international women’s apparel markets using Vollrath’s Relative Trade Advantage (RTA) Index and market share analysis for both aggregate and disaggregate trade data from the UN Statistics Database for the years 1993-2007. Findings show the complexity of the comparative advantage concept and indicate that appearances can be deceiving. Outstanding performance for exporters based on RTA values at the aggregate level does not necessarily mean outstanding performance at the subcategory level. Furthermore, market share analysis shows that new players are making a strong showing in the women’s apparel trade. Niche opportunities are revealed for the current export leaders, as well as up-and-coming apparel exporters. The results suggest that Vollrath’s RTA Index, heretofore little used in the apparel trade area, offers a useful additional perspective on comparative advantage and should be considered for use in future apparel trade studies.

An assessment of aesthetics and comfort for women’s apparel products in terms of pattern design parameters

The proper assessment of aesthetics and comfort is an important step before launching a new type of apparel. Most current works on this assessment are qualitative and hard to be applied in practical to improve apparel design. In this study, we proposed two quantitative mappings from pattern design parameters to degree of aesthetics and pattern design parameters to degree of comfort for assessing aesthetics and comfort of apparel, and particularly, women’s pants have been investigated. Statistical analysis was employed in the mappings’ development. An experiment was conducted as a validation for the mappings. Two major conclusions are drawn from this study. The first is that these mappings enable to extract a more advanced pattern for apparel design after the iterative pattern revision. The second is that these mappings are able to be digitalized and then the traditional method of observing feedbacks of aesthetics and comfort for an apparel product can be updated into a more efficient and low-cost one.

E-Service Performance of Apparel E-Retailing Websites

This article takes a longitudinal approach to examine the evolution of e-retail sites in reference to service delivery performance. Using a content analysis approach, product-related e-service attributes currently available on women's apparel websites were identified and quantified in order to compare them to data collected in an earlier time frame. A Chi-square Goodness-of-Fit test was conducted to compare availability of e-service attributes in 2011 and 2016. The current retailers provided more product description/presentation attributes on their websites than in the 2011 research. However, they are still at an unsatisfactory level that need further improvement. This article offers practical insights for fashion websites in terms of the areas of strengths and weakness in e-service performance by exploring how e-service performance of apparel e-retailers has changed over the past five years.