Working sromen account for an increasing proportion of maternity apparel sa1es, but at present, knowledge of their clothing behaviours is limited. past research has dernonstrated that an understanding of apparel consumer markets may be gained by examining purchase decision behaviour. The purpose of this study was to examine one component of maternity employment apparel purchase decisions, that being the perceived importance of evaluative criteria.

A convenience sample of childbirth education participants from Winnipeg area was surveyed. A total of 203 took part, giving a 658 response rate. Respondents vrere primarily first-time mothers, aged 25 to 29. The majority were employed in professional or clerical occupations, earned $20r000 to 940r000 a year, and reported household incomes of 940,000 to 970,000.

Overall, respondents were confident in their ability to dress professionally, felt that wearing appropriate clothing during pregnancy was important to career success, and perceived themselves as being highly visible to others in the workplace. They erere mildly dissatisfied with the market selection of maternity employment apparel. Respondents exhibited a neutral career orientation, and positive attitudes toward pregnancy.

Comfort was rated as the most important consideration in apparer purchase decisions, followed by expands with figurer appropriate for work, fit, and non-restricting style. Personal preference $ras identified as the most important source of clothing information.

Five hypotheses were tested. The first deart with identification of dimensions of evaruative criteria importance ratings. Apprication of factor analysis to the data reveared three importance dimensions, labelled Appearance, Practicality, and Economy.

The remaining four hypotheses examined relationships between evaluative criteria factors and the foltowing:​ product purchase characteristics, demographics, consumer and situationar characteristics, and perceived importance of clothing information sources. One-way ANOVA, simple linear regression, and Pearson product-moment correlations tùere used to test these hypotheses.

A negative relationship was identified between the perceived importance of economy-oriented evaluative criteria and outfit price. Positive relationships were identified between perceived importance of appearance-oriented criteria, and both maternity employment wardrobe expenditures and perceived importance of crothing during pregnancy. Positive relationships existed between the perceived importance of practicarity-oriented criteria, and both self-confidence in dress and perceived importance of clothing during pregnancy.

Positive associations existed between the perceived importance of intrapersonal information sources and scores on each evaluative criteria factor. positive correrations were also identified for the Appearance factor and interpersonalr print, retail, audio-visuar, and professional information indices.

While individual product, demographic, and consumer characteristics courd be used to predict the perceived importance of maternity emproyment apparel evaruative criteria, they were not important predictors. Generally, they courd not account for more than 10% of variation in the data. The exception was perceived importance of clothing, which explained 21% of variation in Appearance factor index scores. As well, correlations between factors and information source indices were of a weak to moderate magnitude. It was concluded that multivariate moders are necessary to fully exprain maternity employment apparel purchase decision behaviour.