Clothing Consumers’ Aesthetic Preferences and Sustainable Marketing Model System Based on Kansei Engineering

China’s online retail sales growth rate of men’s plain color shirts had declined because they could not meet customers’ aesthetic value needs. This study aims to determine consumers’ aesthetic value preferences and corresponding design elements. Based on Kansei Engineering, a semantic differential scale questionnaire was conducted with seven crucial Kansei words and styling specimens. Then, researchers validated these Kansei words using principal component analysis. More significantly, this study used partial least squares to construct a relationship between crucial Kansei words and styling design elements. Furthermore, researchers obtained the matching colors corresponding to Kansei words in the color image scale. Thus, Kansei words, styling design elements, and corresponding colors made up the recommendation guidelines. Lastly, questionnaires and interviews were used to verify the effectiveness of these guidelines. These recommendation guidelines were the most important results of this study. Besides, this study also found that the recent popular oversized fit appeared in distinctive and casual styles, but the audience is relatively small. Purchasers preferred a one-button square cuff, and the separate left-side pocket is more popular than both-side pockets. Purchasers liked the wide-spread collar compared with the classical pointed collar because it appeared most frequently in recommendation guidelines. Classic fit was still the mainstream, but its popularity would decline. In addition, modern fit and slim fit would become increasingly popular.

Funding: B. Ge has two funding projects (100%): the Soft Science Research Program of Henan Province, China [Project 252400410636] and the general project of Colleges and Universities Humanities and Social Sciences of the Henan Provincial Department of Education, China [Project 2025-ZDJH-776].