Meeting athleisure end-user needs through problem-based learning

ABSTRACT

Today, athleisure is one of the key trends in the fashion industry combining both casual style with health enthusiastic appeal creating a billion-dollar industry. Athleisure is the combining of activewear into women’s daily lives and their participation in physical activities. The problem-based learning (PBL) projects focused on athleisure apparel for various types of target market segmentations: 1) student selected customer target segmentation, 2) individual end-user, or 3) end-users of a specific company. Target market groups provided three unique PBL projects designed to improve students understanding of female athleisure consumer needs. Professional experts guided the students in the functional, expressive, and aesthetic considerations of athleisure apparel as defined in the FEA Consumer Needs Model (Lamb & Kallal 1992). A conceptual framework for apparel design. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 10(2), 42–47) for each of the PBL projects. The unstructured PBL process allowed the students to develop questions and solutions under real-world situational paradigm.

KEYWORDS:

• Athleisure wear
• consumer needs
• problem-based learning
• FEA model

Acknowledgements

The authors would also like to thank Cotton Incorporated for their support. Thank you to Jung E. Ha-Brookshire, a former global sourcing manager for her evaluation of Project A. The authors would also like to thank Heather Ballard, a well-respected yoga instructor for her guidance in the yoga PBL Project B. Thank you to Brandi Preston, Creative Director for her time and her swimwear knowledge that she so graciously shared with the students.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Cotton Incorporated: [Grant Number The Touch, the Feel of Cotton: The Fabric That Sav].