Machines Perform in the Fashion Industry

The fashion industry has been in the world since time immemorial. Fortunately, the industry joined the twenty-first century perfectly like most of other industries. It has enthusiastically embraced technology that has enabled interactive mechanisms to be used in fashion (Bringer & Danjoux 2006). The advancement in technology has made interaction easy and effective. In fact, the world has become a global village as a result of technology. Without interaction, it is not possible for an industry to sell. Interacting with stakeholders in the fashion industry is a key factor that ensures that customers, suppliers and producers are connected (Shinkle 2010). Since every person in the world needs fashion daily or in a particular stage of life, it is important to understand how interaction takes place in the fashion industry. Therefore, there is a need to investigate the way interactive machines perform in the fashion industry. This includes the interactive mechanisms used, their impact, effectiveness and shortcomings (Farren & Hutchison 2004). This research paper will determine the way interactive machines perform in the fashion industry. It will also seek to understand how the fashion industry has been impacted by the existing interactive mechanisms.

Research Questions

1. How does the interactive machine perform in the fashion industry?
2. What are the interactive mechanism existing in the fashion industry?
3. What are the positive and negative impacts of interactive mechanisms in the fashion industry?

Research Findings

This research seeks to find out how the interactive machine has made the fashion industry effective. The research will prove that the interactive machine has been a booster to the fashion industry. Therefore, it should be improved to make the industry more effective than it is today.

Theoretical Framework

Most cultural studies have adopted distinctive theoretical reinforcements in order to get a workable elucidation to their subject issue. This project adopts the cyclical and cumulative interdependence theory as its support because the theory views an individual and community as trapped in spiral problems and opportunities, hence, community and individuals’ resources are commonly dependent.

Cyclical and cumulative interdependence theory was founded by Myrdal (1997). According to Myrdal, the cyclical and cumulative theory is interlocking, circular and interdependent within the process of cumulative causation. Myrdal suggested that a community and personal well-being are closely connected in a surge of negative impacts. She argued that the closure of a workshop or other predicaments can lead to a surge of community and personal problems such as migration of people from one area to the other or from that particular community. Therefore, the interdependence of factors interaction speeds up once a sequence of decline begins. For instance, at the community level, desire to have a new fashion leads to innovation, opening retail stores and initiating beauty and fashion competition, which leads to new designs, use of unexpected materials and distinct promotion to make the fashion known. In addition, the cycle repeats itself at a personal level. The fashion leads to an increased desire to look good, high self-esteem and spending due to high competition (Craick 1993).

Interactive mechanism in the fashion industry programmes should structure its efforts around three principal points for improving communication in the industry. These programmes’ structures, such as the cyclical theory, combine tools and strategies from reactions to the other interactive mechanism theories (Dourish 2001). The first tool to breaking the normative cycle is to acquire comprehensive programmes. Comprehensive programmes are ones that include different services and those that attempt to bridge the community and individual needs. Secondly, the key to implementing extensive plans without becoming over uncontrolled is embracing collaboration among various organisations to offer complementary services such that their combined efforts and the output are more than the stakeholders could achieve individually. Collaboration involves links among participants, even if the coordination might vary from informal to formal. Thirdly, community organizing acts through which a local community can contribute to comprehending how their community well-being and personal lives are interconnected (Hansen 2004). Interactive machine in a community should include individuals to take part as a community in the processes, just like the individuals generate spiral plunging whenever they relate in a succession of failure together with their community. In the fashion industry, interactive machine is chief to this matter (Anakin 2010).

This study will closely look at three important studies that discussed interactive machine in the fashion industry. In their well-documented work, Farren and Hutchison (2004) discussed how the fashion industry has used technology to advance to new levels. They demonstrated how fashion is utilising digital images instead of the original analogue images (Farren & Hutchison 2004). Similarly, the study will closely look at the work of Bringer and Danjoux (2006). They discussed how the fashion industry has transformed in the 21st century and started involving media in its promotions (Bringer & Danjoux 2006). This study will also consider the work of Eugenie Shinkle who discussed how the fashion industry has involved the media. Eugenie Shinkle (2013) compares the past, present and future connection between the media and the fashion industry (Shinkle 2013).

Research Design

The researchers will employ a descriptive design. A descriptive design seeks to uncover the nature of factors involved in a given situation, the degree in which it exists and the relationship between them (Bell 1993). A descriptive survey will be employed because it allows the researchers to adopt a holistic approach of the study sampled, thus enabling and utilising research tools like questionnaires and focus group discussion guides. The researchers will obtain information from a sample rather than the entire population at one point in a given time (Merleau-Ponty 2000).

Research Instruments

Data will be collected from two main sources; primary and secondary sources. Secondary sources include relevant documents and reports. The researchers will employ the technique to pick information that is available from these reports. Using primary sources, data will be collected from selected respondents using focus group discussions and questionnaires. It will involve both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The use of the two approaches at the same time in basic research is recommended by Gay (1996) as the best way to obtain sufficient results.

Both open and closed ended questionnaires will be administered. This is because closed ended questionnaires are easier to analyse since they are in an immediate usable form, and each item may be followed by alternative answers (Manovich 2001). Open ended questions permit a great depth of response, where a respondent will be allowed to give a personal response, usually reasons for the response given will be directly or indirectly included. The researchers equally preferred to use this method because of its ability to solicit information from respondents within a short time as supported by Gupta (1999). Furthermore, respondents will be given time to consult records so that sensitive questions could be truthfully answered as supported by Floyd (1993).

Focus group discussions will be used to generate information from the respondents. The composition of the groups will be limited to those with similar characteristics, such as socio-economic status, so that the members can feel free in contribution to the issues at hand. The study will employ the focus group discussions guide of all the 87 respondents adopted for the study. This will allow members to share their views, experiences and opinions. Focus group interviews are groups of people whose opinions and expectations are solicited simultaneously. This is sufficient in that it will generate many dialogues (Endowwistle 2000).

Data Analysis and Techniques

The researchers will collect both qualitative and quantitative data that will be used to analyse data from targeted respondents. Upon completion of data collection, the questionnaires and focus group discussion guides will be edited, coded and entered into a computer spreadsheet in a standard format to allow for descriptive statistics analysis. The data will be in the form of texts and materials that describe occurrences. The researchers will detect various categories in the data, which are distinct from each other. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) computer software will be used for analysis. Measures of central tendency (mean, mode, median) and frequencies and percentages will be used to describe the population (Barthes 1985).

Ethical Considerations

The researcher will ensure that participants are well-informed of the intentions of the study so that they participate from a point of information. The purpose, procedures and benefits of the study will be explained. Inclusion will be voluntary. Informed written consent will be sought from the study participants. Consent will be translated and simplified by the research assistants to facilitate understanding of information contained therein. The researcher will also ensure that data collected is analysed professionally and that it is not fudged to conform to a predetermined opinion (Anakin 2010). Further, to protect the respondents’ identities, data will be reported as a block instead of highlighting individual cases. The researchers will ensure that all information provided is treated with utmost privacy and confidentiality and that no information will be released to a third party without written permission from the source (Hansen 2006).